Jala Wahid

Jala Wahid: Slow Crush
A new public sculpture in Forma's Peveril Gardens
Peveril Gardens, FormaHQ, London
July 2025 - July 2026

Forma is proud to announce Jala Wahid’s first public sculpture commission — Slow Crush — will be unveiled in FormaHQ’s Peveril Gardens, Bermondsey on 5 July 2025.

Wahid’s large-scale sculpture revivifies the remains of the ‘Hasanlu Lovers’ — two ancient male skeletons who held onto each other tenderly in the face of violent death. Installed for a full year within Peveril Gardens, Slow Crush examines how histories are named, claimed, and politicised in the present. Responding to its site, the sculpture emerges from the earth as an ode to the layered histories of diaspora, migration, displacement and queer resilience.

Standing over two metres tall, Slow Crush takes shape in fleshy-pink fibreglass, forming a heart-like gestalt of the two Hasanlu Lovers skeletons locked in an embrace. The phrase “dogged ecstasy” replaces one of the lovers’ teeth, while a playful kitten climbs their limbs — referencing the garden’s nocturnal wildlife, from prowling cats to birds of prey. Embedded amongst resilient, self-seeding, non-native plants, the sculpture reflects and builds upon its local ecology — the ever-changing diverse, urban landscape of Bermondsey and Peveril Gardens.

Slow Crush offers a powerful sculptural presence that reflects on cultural reclamation and contested histories. Unearthed in 1973 in Hasanlu — now considered part of Western Iran, but situated in Eastern Kurdistan — the skeletons date back to the violent sacking of the city around 800 BCE. Wahid taps into this deeper tension - rooted in the fractured geography and politics of Hasanlu - a site marked by colonial border-making. Wahid draws on these complexities to explore broader themes of belonging, heritage, and the desire to regain ownership over historical narratives. Through Slow Crush, Wahid confronts the colonial violence of archaeological practice — reimagining the pair beyond the 'evidence rooms' of museums built by theft, offering form and voice to identities long erased. In her revival of the Hasanlu Lovers they are no longer mute specimens confined to display cabinets, but restored as tender subjects, reclaiming their intimate story.