Fourth Plinth: Antelope by Samson Kambalu

Effective sculpture on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square by Samson Kambalu.

I’m always excited to see the new installations on the Fourth Plinth and this is a surprisingly effective one. I’d not liked it in the exhibition of shortlisted works but scaled up and looked at properly from below and from many angles it works really well in the space.

It restages a photograph of Baptist preacher and pan-Africanist John Chilembwe and European missionary John Chorley taken in 1914 at the opening of Chilembwe’s new church in Nyasaland, now Malawi. Chilembwe has his hat on, defying the colonial rule that forbade Africans from wearing hats in front of white people. A year later, he led an uprising against colonial rule.  Chilembwe was killed and his church was destroyed by the colonial police.

In making the figure of Chilembwe larger Kambala elevates the man and his story and makes a comment on underrepresented figures in the history of Colonial Africa. However it is clever in that as you view the work from different angles the perspective and relative size of the figures seems to change. From some angles the two figures almost appear the same size yet at others Chilembwe towers above the square. Could it be a comment in how our views of history can change too?

No end date given but I guess Sep 2023 as the installations are usually there for about a year

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