The 18-foot-tall bronze monument to women and justice was beheaded in the early morning on July 8 while the campus was experiencing harsh weather and power outages due to Hurricane Beryl.

Footage of the vandalism was obtained by campus police, according to the New York Times, which first reported the news.

“We were disappointed to learn the statue was damaged early Monday morning as Hurricane Beryl was hitting Houston,” Kevin Quinn, the university’s executive director of media relations, said in an email to ARTnews. “The damage is believed to be intentional. The University of Houston Police Department is currently investigating the matter.”

The female figure, whose braided hair forms a pair of horns, wears a lacy collar in allusion to similar ones worn by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late Supreme Court justice.

The sculpture was installed in a plaza at the University of Houston after five months of display to critical acclaim at Madison Square Park in New York City. But when it traveled to Houston, it drew criticism from the anti-abortion Christian group Texas Right to Life, which called for a campus-wide protest “to keep the Satanic abortion idol out of Texas.” The University of Houston responded by cancelling a planned opening and artist talk, as well as choosing not to show an accompanying video work also by Sikander.

It’s worth noting that Sikander’s artist statement about the work contains no mention of Satanism. “The rams’ horns are universal symbols of strength and wisdom,” Sikander told Art in America earlier this year. “There is nothing Satanic about them.”

“The calls to remove this proud symbol of female autonomy unintentionally underscored the reason Sikander had created it in the first place,” Eleanor Heartney wrote in that profile of Sikander.

Sikander described the vandalism of Witness as “a very violent act of hate” and told the New York Times that it should be investigated as a crime.

In a written statement to ARTnews, Sikander said it was “important to point out the cowardice behind the violent act, trying to cloak the narrative to the storm. I urge the University of Houston to release the footage from the security camera to show that it was intentional hateful vandalism.”

In addition to exhibitions at museums around the world, Sikander has been the recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant. A survey of her work is being held as a collateral event in tandem with this year’s Venice Biennale.

Quinn initially told ARTnews that conservators have been called in to advise on the necessary repairs to Witness, and that the university had been in contact with Sikander about repairing the artwork “as quickly as possible.”

But Sikander has other plans. “I don’t want to ‘repair’ or conceal,” Sikander told the New York Times. “I want to ‘expose,’ leave it damaged. Make a new piece, and many more.”

On July 11, Quinn confirmed to ARTnews that the artist had requested the sculpture be left beheaded. “We respect the artist’s wishes and will leave the sculpture as is,” he said in an email statement.

Update, July 10, 2024: Addition of written statement from Sikander.

Update, July 11, 2024: Addition of written statement from Quinn on Sikander’s request.

The sculpture, which was acclaimed by critics when it appeared in New York’s Madison Square Park last year, was intended to explore the relationship between femininity and power.

Titled Witness (2023), the work features a female figure who levitates above the ground, her arms and legs dissolving into rootlike forms. She floats within the armature of a hoop skirt that contains mosaics depicting plants. She wears a lacy collar in allusion to similar ones worn by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the late Supreme Court justice.

Sikander has said that the work, which debuted alongside another sculpture, was, in part, a response to the paring back of abortion rights in the United States, including the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade.

Amid those developments, Sikander wrote in a statement accompanying the work, came a dismissal of “the indefatigable spirit of women who have been collectively fighting for their right to their own bodies over generations. However, the enduring power lies with the people who step into and remain in the fight for equality. That spirit and grit is what I want to capture in both the sculptures.”

Now, the work is to appear next week at the University of Houston in Texas. Some conservative groups have called for it not to go on view at all, calling its imagery abject.

Earlier this month, Texas Right to Life, a self-described “pro-life” organization that has been credited with helping undo Roe v. Wade, claimed the work enlists “satanic imagery to honor abortion and memorialize the late Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” although it did not describe what that imagery was. (Sikander’s artist statement about the work contains no mention of satanism.)

“Disobedience to God certainly should not be esteemed by society, much less lauded with a statue,” the group wrote. “On the contrary, art should reflect truth, goodness, and beauty: three timeless values that reveal the nature of God. Art cannot have beauty without truth. Art cannot have truth without goodness. A statue honoring child sacrifice has no place in Texas.”

The Sikander work has previously been a subject of controversy in conservative media, with Fox News having run a report on X users calling the sculpture “demonic” in 2023.

Sikander did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

Axios reported that Texas Right to Life had been referring to a booklet about Witness published by the Madison Square Park Conservancy that mentioned Abrahamic religions, which refer to horned beings.

“The trope is not the artist’s alone: horned gods and goddesses abound in world religions, from ancient Egypt and Greece to other parts and eras of Africa and Europe. In the Abrahamic faiths the horned beast is associated with forces of evil, chaos, and destruction—the devil himself,” critic Aruna D’Souza writes in the booklet.

D’Souza continues, “but again, Sikander reveals to us what’s really at stake in such conceptions. In the biblical story of creation, Satan and Eve are intertwined the way a snake wraps around a tree limb; woman is the vehicle for iniquity, the temptress, the instrument of evil. Sikander takes this idea, one that runs through so many cultures and epochs and philosophies—of woman as a threat, as an embodiment of unspeakable desire, as taint—and turns negativity into power. Her Eve, her Havah, sports her horns like a crown, as a point of pride. She understands the endless projections onto herself as her strength.”

In an FAQ about Witness, the University of Houston acknowledged that the work might be “offensive to some people,” adding that “the sculpture has braids shaped like ram horns, representing the unification of disparate strands. Ram horns have significance in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as Central and South Asian beliefs, often associated with power and valor. The artist has said the braids link to one of her paintings that represents the courage, fluidity and resilience of the feminine.”

Following the controversy, the University of Houston ended up canceling the opening and an artist’s talk planned for the sculpture. After the cancelation, Sikander told the Art Newspaper, “Art should be about discourse and not censorship. Shame on those that silence artists.”

The Sikander sculpture is the latest in a series of artworks that right-wing groups have labeled “satanic.” Others include performances by Marina Abramović and a Simone Leigh sculpture that temporarily appeared in the former site of a Robert E. Lee monument in New Orleans.

Update, 2/27/24, 10:55 a.m.: This article has been updated to include mention of the canceled opening for the sculpture.

Liliane Lengrande, Apocalypse par le feu, 1987–91.

JULES-HENRI LENGRANDE/VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

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