Description: A vertical form, solitary and reaching upward — like a silent cry from someone who no longer hopes, yet remains standing. A treeless trunk with no branches or leaves, marked only by lines, scars, and resilience. This piece does not ask the viewer, but the inner self: if there were no hope, what kept us alive?
This sculpture neither cries out nor begs.
It simply stands — tall and silent.
Its form is trunk-like, stripped of all: no branches, no leaves, no vitality.
And yet, it reaches upward — not from strength, but from something subtler: the habit of survival.
The artist’s phrase:
“Hope, if it never was?”
is not just a question — it’s a state of mind.
In a world saturated with doubt and wounds, this work embodies that very doubt: the hesitation to stand, to persist, to continue.
The raw grain of the wood, its scorched surface, and eroded lines do not decorate — they declare.
There is no embellishment here. This sculpture is all wound, all voice.
It feels like a trunk whose bark has been torn by history’s winds — yet its core stands firm.
Was It Not Hope? belongs to a class of still sculptures — works with no gesture, no action, yet deeply internal and profoundly resonant.
It doesn’t ask the viewer to interpret; it simply demands a pause in its presence.
In the end, this piece is not about hope — it is about standing in the absence of it.
And perhaps that is what real hope looks like — not what shines,
but what endures
