26th September 2022 by Frances
The 14th Fourth Plinth
‘Antelope’ Samson Kambalu, 2022, Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, WC2.
In London’s most renowned setting, the Fourth Plinth biennial commission is probably the most well known and possibly London’s most visible contemporary public art work. The 14th commission (since its conception in 1998) has a poignant post colonial narrative, fittingly figurative, in this historic site.
Kambalu was motivated to create a work that put ‘detail to the black’ and ‘African experience’. He has reimagined a photograph from 1914, of two men, John Chilembwe, a preacher, and John Chorley, a European missionary, altering the scale of the figures in relation to each other, diminishing Chorley and inverting historical bias. Both men stand hatted, in defiance of a colonial rule in Nyasaland, now Malawi, forbidding Africans from wearing hats in front of white people. Chilembwe was later killed in an anticolonial uprising and his church was destroyed.
This sculpture reflects our need to face our uncomfortable history and empowers us to redress equality.
The Fourth Plinth is the first sculpture on the Turquoise Walk, and will be on display until 2024.
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