The piece by artist Diane Puntar was designed to promote accessibility to the arts
A sculpture designed to promote accessibility to art and commissioned as part of Kingston 2025 celebrations, has been damaged, according to the artist behind the work.
Diana Puntar’s project is called ‘Chimera Historical Re-Anachronism (H±R-A)’, the main piece of which is a life size imagining of a mammoth-like creature and is located in Kingston University’s Town House.
Viewers were invited to participate in the art via an online form for Puntar to then etched onto the sculpture. However, the artist has since discovered that someone has taken matters into their own hands.
“While some people have submitted drawings and they’ve been etched in, somebody decided to take it upon themselves to write directly onto the sculpture in a way that also erased something that I had etched in,” Puntar said.
For the piece, Puntar copied images she found around Kingston directly onto the sculpture, including a quote from the late musician Kurt Cobain, which she saw graffitied on the walls of the nearby All Saints Church.
Puntar etched the quote, “God is gay” onto the piece but later discovered that it had been scratched out and “God love you” was written on the art instead.
Puntar said she is going to repair the damage done to the sculpture soon but the intervention made her consider the work again.
“This is something that I really need to think about in relationship to the piece,” she said.
But Puntar also said she found the new message homophobic and it didn’t add anything to the discussion.
Puntar’s piece, one of the several commissioned for the Kingston 2025 cultural festival, has drawings etched into its tusks, many of which refer to other places in Kingston, like the Kingston Museum and the Frederick W Paine Funeral Museum.
The decision by Puntar to invite participation was inspired by the project’s origins.
Puntar said the project questioned symbols and objects of power that become part of our history and identity.
She said that people in the UK were surrounded by language and imagery that reinforced the idea of the royal family and imperial past.
“There are crowns everywhere. They’re on sign codes. They’re on boxes of tea or biscuits,” she said. “There’s the Victoria line. There’s the Elizabeth line. There’s the royal borough of Kingston, which actually if you think about what that means, that’s about ownership and sovereign space.”
The statue touches upon historical power dynamics through the Kingston Coronation Stone in its base.
Puntar added that history often excludes common folk or marginalised groups from dominant narratives because most museum displays are dedicated to royal or aristocratic families.
She wants to give people the space to submit a drawing that represents them so that they can be included in the public realm.
Despite the setback with the interactive nature of the project, Puntar said she still wanted to get as many drawings on the sculpture as possible and encouraged everyone to submit ideas by filling out the form here.
The sculpture will be displayed at the Town House until July 2026.
