Subversive Statues Take Center Stage in London’s Trafalgar Square

A Cold Reception for Lady in Blue

While newspapers and media outlets have warmly welcomed the colossus, social media users have been anything but supportive. Reactions have ranged from dismay to disgust, with those unhappy with the latest Fourth Plinth statue appearing to outnumber those expressing appreciation by a significant margin.

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A particular critique that arises repeatedly is that, aside from being simply ugly, it commits the greater crime of being demoralizing, by which is meant that it undermines traditional conceptions of Britishness and British history.

The Lady in Blue’s company in Trafalgar Square illustrates the point. Statues of Admiral Horatio Nelson, King George IV, Major-General Sir Henry Havelock and General Sir Charles James Napier variously adorn the other pillars and plinths in the square, with the Fourth Plinth originally intended for an equestrian statue of King William IV. However, it remained empty due to a lack of funds.

For over a century afterward there was no consensus regarding what use it should be put to, before the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) commissioned contemporary sculptures for display on the plinth, a decision that many seem to think disastrous.

Some of the art installations that have featured on the Fourth Plinth as part of the programs since that decision include Lady in Blue’s immediate predecessor, “Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant)”, which was made up of plaster casts of the faces of 726 transgender and “non-binary” people arranged in the form of a tzompantli, or Mesoamerican skull rack, around the sides of the plinth.

Before that was “Antelope” by Samson Kambalu, which restaged a photograph of Baptist preacher and pan-Africanist John Chilembwe and European missionary John Chorley as a sculpture, the former towering above the latter in what was supposed to be a comment on the “hidden narratives of underrepresented peoples” in the history of the British Empire in Africa and elsewhere.

Some of the other hosted artworks include “Really Good”, an enormous bronze thumbs-up with an elongated thumb; “Hahn/Cock”, an almost five-meter-tall sculpture of a cockerel colored a vivid blue, intended as a comment on “the masculine character of the square, with its formal equestrian statues and many statues of men”; and “Model for a Hotel”, a scaled-up architectural model of a 21-story building made out of brightly colored Perspex.

Set against their neighboring statues, the occupant of the Fourth Plinth therefore strikes a discordant note: four people represented who speak of Britain’s history, and one revolving pedestal devoted to questioning it and recasting Britain in a new light.

That choice of arrangement appears to be deliberate, given that viable suggestions have been made for alternatives in recent years. Foremost among them was the proposition that a statue of Queen Elizabeth II be placed on the Fourth Plinth, an idea that gained traction and the support of members of Parliament following her death in 2022. However, it ultimately went nowhere, nor have any of the other suggestions, such as a statue of World War II codebreaker Alan Turing. The current commission remains.

Black Lives Matter and the Statue Wars

The wave of criticism is unsurprising given the central role statues have played in the subversive politics of the 2020s. During the Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots in the wake of George Floyd’s death in 2020, statues of historical figures were torn down across the United States in protest at their perceived involvement in slavery and colonialism.

The iconoclastic targeting of statues was not limited to the US, with a handful in the UK coming in for criticism, vandalism or demands for their removal. On 7 June 2020, a statue of Edward Colston, an English merchant and slave trader, was torn down by BLM rioters using ropes and subsequently rolled through the streets and thrown into Bristol Harbour.

Less violently, the statue of Winston Churchill was graffitied with the words “was a racist” and required protection from protesters, while other statues considered to be incendiary were removed by the authorities, to the cheers of crowds.

Statues have taken on a renewed meaning in modern political life, and onlookers are interpreting decisions made in light of that reality. The successor to Lady in Blue is to be Andra Ursuta’s “Untitled”, an equestrian-shaped statue shrouded in translucent pale green. 

“The rider and horse will remain anonymous, their distinguishing features concealed under the folds that drape over them. Hovering at the edge of visibility, the work is a yet-to-be-uncovered or an already cancelled public monument”, the description reads on the Mayor of London’s website.

It further states that the sculpture’s ghostly color recalls an “uncanny slime” – ectoplasm – which it says is “an imaginary excretion of formless matter that threatens ordered, consensual reality”.

Such designs are not likely to calm a public fed up with the perceived erosion of national identity and the rewriting of history. Indeed, the British right is already identifying the Fourth Plinth as a potential rallying point for future elections. Time will tell whether they win out in the battle for Britain’s public spaces or the Lady in Blue and her supporters.