LONDON — A reconstruction of an ancient statue of a winged bull destroyed by ISIS is the latest public art installation to sit on a sculpture platform here known as the Fourth Plinth, on Trafalgar Square.

The sculpture, by the American artist Michael Rakowitz, titled “The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist,” was unveiled on Tuesday. It depicts a re-creation of Lamassu, an Assyrian statue that stood in Iraq in the ancient city of Nineveh, on the outskirts of modern-day Mosul, until 2015 when the militant group destroyed it along with other irreplaceable works of ancient art.

Lamassu is a mythological creature known for its protective qualities. It has the head of a man and the body of a winged bull. Mr. Rakowitz’s re-creation is made of 10,500 recycled cans of date syrup; dates were a key export in Iraq before war shrank the industry.

In an interview with The New York Times when he was shortlisted for the commission, Mr. Rakowitz described his work as “a placeholder for the thousands of human lives that have gone missing and can’t be reconstructed.”