CRITICAL REFUGE: SCULPTURES BY MOHAMAD HAFEZ 

We Have Won!

2015

Plaster, paint, antique radio, found objects, MP3 media player, rigid foam

48" x 48" x 34"

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We Have Won! confronts the dark irony of its title's declarative statement of victory. What does victory look like, and whose victory is this? The sculpture enacts physically the imaginatively violent gesture of cross sections in architectural drawing, where buildings are sketched as if cut by a vertical plane. Here, abutting apartment buildings are dramatically exposed as if entire facades have been removed. Common spaces like hallways and stairs are unusable, and personal living spaces have been left in disarray. Depicting repeating patterns of common destruction, We Have Won! underscores the intimacy between these separate spaces. In modeling the physical destruction of homes, it draws our attention to how home is made by those who inhabit them. Homes are unmade according to the discretion of the "we" claiming victory in the context of Syria -- the military proxies of interventionist coalitions.