Iconoclasm. The Buddhas of Bamiyan

“Iconoclasm. The Bamyan Buddhas” shows a selection of materials from the 1967 expedition that Margarida Corachán, Albert Folch, Edmonde Iba and Eudald Serra undertook to Afghanistan and India. A travel diary, a set of photographs and a video created during the expedition attest the former splendour of the valley and the gigantic Bamyan Buddhas, as a contrast to present pictures.

In March 2001, after Mullah Omar’s edict in February of that year to destroy the country’s non-Islamic heritage, and only months before the destruction of the emblematic twin towers in Manhattan – broadcast live on TV, shown repeatedly and a prelude to everything that came after – the Taliban blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan, as shown by the images from the exhibition.

In 2003, UNESCO included the cultural landscape of the Bamiyan Valley and its archaeological remains in its list of Heritage of Humanity Sites, as well as in the World Heritage in Danger list, after the destruction of the Buddhas. Evoking the words of Jean Starobinsky about the impact of contemporary ruins, the absent Buddhas of Bamiyan valey “emanate the odour of massacre”; namely, of violence, death and terror.