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What is a monument?
In the past, sculptures were purposed with remembering a certain value.
The squares of our cities are populated with monuments, but our eyes don’t register them anymore and we forget their meaning.
So it happens that the testament carried by these bronze or stone shapes becomes forgotten and the sculpture ends up occupying a residual space, such as in the art of the urban structure.
But sometimes the cycles of the history begin to tell us about harsh conflicts happening within Europe once again, even when we seek to extend the era of peacefulness, because Europe actually never defeated its religious and ethnic ghosts of hate. Therefore, sculpture and its given purpose is born anew as it starts to talk about notions of bewilderment and exile, especially when one views the eroded iron of Mirsad Herenda.
The scupltures of Herenda are monuments, not just because of their often imposing dimension, but also because they reflect the fragility of human beings through winding metal and his own obduracy in not resigning himself to history.
Indeed, the works of Herenda are obstinate sculpture art. Built, piece by piece, with patient soldering work, these ideas are delicately crafted as they start from thinner branches in order to build the tree, woods, and brazen landscapes in their entirety.
Through that patient work nothing goes lost: even the smallest details are still intact, wasted material that usually would be thrown away, instead remain and are included into the sculpture and its being.
This is a statement which illuminates that in the work of human beings nothing can truly be forgotten, no matter how well or poorly it was made.
Everything remains. And perhaps in this path lays the hope for the future of sculpture: to become a monument again, to conserve that which we should not forget.
Domenico Maria Papa