Morad Tahbaz's Sculptures

The prison’s small woodworking shop was open to prisoners from 8 am to 3 pm, offering limited tools and scraps of wood. While Morad hadn’t made much with wood before—just a few simple tables—he transformed two-dimensional lion drawings into three-dimensional sculptures. His first sculpture was hewn from those scrap pieces and painted white. For the second, he found a way to bring in wood from the outside world. With strict rules regarding dimensions and little control over what he received, he found himself working with mahogany, a very dense, hardwood that was particularly challenging to work with—especially given the type of sculpture he was attempting and the limited tools available to him. Afraid that prison officials would not allow him to send the artwork out of prison, he created pieces that could be disassembled so that fellow prisoners on furlough could take them to his wife. Eventually, he got permission to send them out himself.

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