Installations

Sculpture as Witness

By Paul Devon Young


Since the late 1980s, I have been creating a wide range of life-sized, freestanding mixed-media sculptures—works that stand tall, both literally and symbolically. Often figurative and abstract in form, these sculptures make use of materials such as wood, rope, metal, paint, and clay, combining the organic with the industrial.


I refer to these works as “The Collective”—a body of sculptures that act as witnesses to the world around them.


They explore urgent and ongoing themes, including:


Environmental collapse
Chemicals in our food supply
Artificial hunger and disconnection from nature
War, displacement, and the cost of never-ending conflict
The erasure and reimagining of ancestry and cultural identity
The feeling of being remade in a land that calls itself home



“These sculptures are not static—they hold memory, conflict, and survival. They are fragments of stories, standing in the stillness that comes after the noise.”


Each piece is an attempt to translate deeply personal and global issues into physical form—asking the viewer to consider not just what they’re seeing, but what they may have stopped noticing.