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A Sculpture for the Ahmed Family, 2005
A Sculpture for the Ahmed Family, 2005 (detail)
A Sculpture for the Ahmed Family, 2005 (detail)
A Sculpture for the Ahmed Family, 2005 (detail)
A Sculpture for the Ahmed Family (2005/2006) Maquette (plaster, pigment) A Sculpture for the Ahmed Family’ is part of a series that Evans is making with various people around the world who we’d regard as belonging to their counry’s ‘elite’. Evans visited Justice Refaat Ahmed, in his home in Dhaka, and questioned him about his family’s influence on Bangladesh – and what effect the elite can have in relationship, or in tandem with, the country’s faltering democracy. Refaat Ahmed talked about “rising above all that is commonplace and forging a neutral and passive path through the polarities” and the idea of a Banyan tree was proposed by his mother who was drawn to its quality of endurance. Whilst making the first maquette Evans wrote to Refaat Ahmed, explaining that he’d later learnt that the Banyan tree is also known as a ‘strangler fi g’ – because it’s roots gradually spread round a host tree, eventually causing that host to decay away, leaving no trace behind, except sometimes a long hollow extending up inside the middle of the full-grown banyan. On the plus side, the banyan is not particular about which tree it starts life on (consequently killing very few of any particular kind) and so is no threat to the survival of other plant species. Refaat Ahmed replied acknowledging the tree’s “insidious trait” and hoped that it wouldn’t detract from the benevolent picture his mother was attempting to draw in using the analogy. He also clarifi ed the term ‘polarities’, he’d used in our conversation, as “ideological polarities in a nascent democracy”. Evans made a second maquette of the sculpture in response. In this latest version the Banyan tree is circling it’s host but hasn’t reached the ground to take root. ‘A Sculpture for the Ahmed Family’ was exhibited at ‘I Really Should...’, Lisson Gallery, London (curated by Stefan Kalmar, Summer 2005). << GO BACK |  | |
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