In his practice he questions the power of the image,
the sense-making force of gestures and language,
the relevance of the norm.
          In 1823, the British Museum in London
acquired, with the help of the archaeologist Henry Salt,
the three-metre-long granite arm from a monumental
statue of Pharaoh Amenhotep III. With his clenched fist
it can, still today, be viewed as a relic from a bygone era
and from a history that belongs to Egypt. Salt, who was
appointed Consul General to Egypt in 1815, was tasked
with securing antiquities and artefacts for the British
Museum in 1816.
          The sculpture mission civilisatrice (2026) is a
reconstruction in styrofoam and jesmonite that draws
direct inspiration from this granite arm. The addition of
the manus fica – a historical hand gesture used to signify
rejection and ward off the evil eye but is considered an
insult within contemporary gang culture – initiates a
discussion about ownership, authenticity and the power
of the image. Can an object that was already robbed of
its cultural and geographic identity also be robbed of
its authenticity? Wasn’t that crime already committed?
tahir elucidates what in Western historiography is
considered a museum object by adding a gesture, a
visual language, an image world. In this way, what is
forgotten or invisible is brought back into the field
of vision. Mutilated body parts from statues are in
themselves often the results of violent colonisation,
101and the issue of rights to cultural heritage is part of the
history of exploitation.
          At Lunds konsthall a new series of three-part
friezes is also shown. Like the sculpture the friezes are
made from materials imitating antique artefacts, in
this case plaster with a surface suggestive of sandstone.
The works centre on the visual expression of language
and on how the meaning of the image can be shifted,
adapted, reinvented and developed. This may be fuelled
by political resistance.
          In one of the friezes tahir has carved out the
expression Bismillah. In everyday usage it is a blessing
used to start a meal or react to something that surprises
you. This word is combined with skeleton arm with its
fingers crossed. The combination creates a paradox:
death as an obvious visual fact (the skeleton arm)
meets a symbol for luck (the crossed fingers). Such
shifts visualise the irony and hypocrisy of a society
‘addicted to cherry-picking’, where different cultures
and social groups are racialised and exploited through
glorification and desire but also through contempt. The
image therefore becomes a way to change the story and
critically evaluate history and the present.