ABBAS AKHAVAN
STUDY FOR A MONUMENT
Made in the tradition of funerary monuments, the work commemorates plants instead of people.
– Abbas Akhavan, 2022
Study for a Monument is an ongoing body of work that archives plant species native to the ancient
region of Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in present-day Iraq. Decades of
war and state intervention – such as the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), the First Gulf War (1991) and the
Invasion of Iraq (2003) – have had devastating consequences on the ecology of this area.
Akhavan has hand sculpted and enlarged each plant out of wax then cast them in bronze. The casts,
resembling burnt fragments, are shown on white bed sheets on the ground. They recall pages from
botanical studies, confiscated goods or objects laid out for examination. Akhavan’s choice of material
is significant, as bronze is linked with ancient Mesopotamian weaponry as well as historical
memorials and monuments. The horizontal display on the floor is unlike the traditional vertical
orientation of commemorative sculptures. Instead, it evokes makeshift funerary displays, sites of
mass burial or piles of shrapnel.
The work draws on research that Akhavan has carried out at Kew Gardens in London and at the
Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. Drawing on the botany and history of Iraq, the work reconsiders
monument-making by shifting away from traditions of human-centric memorialisation.
from the Tate Modern placard.
