Piers Secunda
Piers Secunda
Early life and education
Secunda was born in 1976 in London, England. He studied painting at Chelsea College of Arts in London.[1]
Art career
Since the late nineties Secunda has developed a studio practice using paint in a sculptural manner, rejecting the limitations imposed by the canvas.
Whilst living in New York State in 2001, Secunda was intensely affected by seeing the destruction of the 3,000 year old Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, on the television news and six months later 9/11. Over the following weeks his work started to examine the deliberate destruction of culture. In the years that followed, geopolitics overwhelmed what had previously been an abstract painting practice, to become the primary focus of his work.
Over twenty years, Secunda’s studio practice has become research heavy, examining some of the most significant subjects of our time, such as energy and technology history and the deliberate destruction of culture.[2]
In August 2008, Secunda visited Afghanistan for the first time, to make moulds of Taliban bullet damage. The visit was encouraged and in part facilitated by Sardar Ahmad Khan, who had been an employee of Agence France Press and owner of the media agency Kabul Pressistan. Sardar mapped out locations of Taliban attacks in Kabul the prior year, where Secunda was able to speak to local people to understand what had happened, and mould the bullet damage. The subsequent ‘Taliban Bullet Hole Paintings’ were exhibited in the UK, Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia, China, The United States.[3]
Sardar Ahmad Khan was killed along with his wife and two children in a Taliban attack on Kabul’s Serena Hotel, in 2014.
In 2015 Secunda visited the Kurdish region of Iraq and to travel to recently liberated front line positions with the Peshmerga, to make moulds of ISIS damage to the ancient villages.[1] This visit was not without danger, as they was a mortar attack by ISIS on the first day.[4]
In 2017 Secunda met with Iraqi Culture Minister Fryad Rwandzi at the UNESCO general meeting in Paris, Minister Rwanzi extended an invitation to Baghdad gave Piers a letter to allow access to the recently liberated Mosul Museum in early 2018, to mould the ISIS damage to the monumental Assyrian sculptures. Secunda also gathered charcoal from the partly burned out Mosul Museum, which was ground down into ink and used to make drawings and prints. The Ashmolean Museum commissioned the production of a large installation merging a 3D print of the Ashmolean Museums own Assyrian Relief with the Mosul Museum ISIS damage moulds. The installation was exhibited at the Ashmolean Museum in 2020, as part of the exhibition Owning the Past[5] and subsequently toured the United States.
In 2021 the Ashmolean Museum commissioned Secunda to produce a work during the refurbishment of their Middle East room, merging a 3D print of the Ashmolean Museum’s Assyrian relief with moulded pneumatic drill marks from ISIS destroyed Assyrian sculptures in the Mosul Museum. The work is on permanent display in the Ashmolean Museum.
During the Spring of 2022, four works on paper, made with ink produced from the charred remains of the partly ISIS burned Mosul Museum were acquired by the Mosul Museum. And one work of the same type was acquired by the Iraq National Museum.
References
- ^ "About". Piers Secunda | Artist and Sculptor. Retrieved 2024-05-21.
- ^ "About". Piers Secunda | Artist and Sculptor. Retrieved 2024-05-21.
- ^ "Piers Secunda's Long Road to ISIS Bullet Hole Paintings". Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art. Retrieved 2024-05-21.
- ^ "British artist makes work out of Isis bullet holes". The Art Newspaper - International art news and events. 2017-03-31. Retrieved 2024-05-21.
- ^ "OWNING THE PAST". www.ashmolean.org. Retrieved 2024-05-21.