Mohammed Ghani Hikmat (Iraqi, 1929-2011)

Mohammed Ghani Hikmat helped construct and finish the Freedom monument, which was designed by his teacher the late Iraqi sculptor Jewad Selim, who sadly passed away before its completion. Often working with bronze and wood, Hikmat's work is heavily influenced by Sumerian art, Babylonian monuments and artwork from the Abbasid period, which in the present piece manifests itself in an intricate scene of women and children sat in unison along the length of the piece offering a discourse on ideas of femininity, segregation, development and tradition.