Leave Me Like You Found Me examines the structures created to protect cultural heritage from deliberate destruction. While natural disasters and accidents can damage art and architecture, the intentional destruction of culturally significant sites seeks to erase identity through political, ideological, or religious violence.

These sculptures reimagine protective barricades as objects that exist simultaneously as symbols and as instruments of defense. Constructed from familiar artistic materials—including wood, canvas, marble, and paint—they occupy an ambiguous position between infrastructure and sculpture. The protected objects are not historical artifacts but speculative ones, presented as though they already carry cultural significance. Designed to shield these invented forms from harm, the barricades gradually assume an identity of their own.

Rather than functioning as temporary interventions, the barricades become autonomous forms that invite reflection on preservation, loss, and collective responsibility. They suggest that the act of protection is itself a cultural act. Over time, the structures themselves begin to inherit the cultural significance of the objects they were built to protect.