Clive van den Berg In Memoriam (They Threw Him), 2016 – 2024
‘In Memoriam (They Threw Him)’ is a carved wood sculpture by Clive van den Berg that responds to the violent erasure of queer lives through acts of public execution. Created in the wake of ISIS propaganda footage showing gay men being thrown from rooftops in Syria and Iraq, the work seeks not to reproduce the horror but to offer a reparative act of remembrance. Rather than depicting trauma directly, the sculpture affirms the dignity of lives that were denied the right to be mourned. As part of Van den Berg’s ‘Men Loving’ series, it addresses the complex politics of visibility, grief, and legitimacy, asking whose lives are recognised as worthy of remembrance.
The sculpture reimagines the violated body not as a spectacle but as a site of care and reflection. Through careful carving and symbolic restraint, Van den Berg creates a space in which absence becomes presence, inviting viewers to reflect on how silence and repression shape public memory. The work honours those who have been forgotten or deliberately erased, offering a meditative counterpoint to the violence of their disappearance. At the same time, it calls for a broader cultural reckoning with how gender, sexuality, and vulnerability are understood in societies where nonconforming masculinities remain under threat.
