Talk about timing. If Samson Kambalu’s Fourth Plinth sculpture had been unveiled last month, it would have just been your ordinary run-of-the-mill, colonialism-is-bad, the-British-Empire-is-evil bit of public art. But now, what with the death of Her Maj, it looks a hell of a lot like speaking ill of the dead.
Elizabeth II was the figurehead of the dying embers of the British Empire. The organisers knew that unveiling this work when it was meant to be unveiled – just a few days before her funeral – would have looked a bit like spitting on her grave, so the unveiling was delayed by a few weeks. But its new significance is inescapable, especially as rumours fly around that the Fourth Plinth might be given over to a permanent sculpture of the queen soon.
After Liz’s death, there were also a handful of dissenting voices, people speaking up to say that she ruled over an empire defined by oppression, exploitation and cruelty. When she took over in 1952, a quarter of the world’s population was under British rule, and a lot of people all over the world have a problem with that rule and its legacy: especially as it’s a legacy that Britain has never atoned for.
It’s a very simple sculpture with very simple symbolism.
So here we are, faced with the latest Fourth Plinth sculpture, and it’s all about the cruelty of colonialism. Sorry Liz. It’s a restaging of a photograph of pan-Africanist John Chilembwe and European missionary John Chorley taken in 1914, at the opening of Chilembwe’s church in what was then Nyasaland, now Malawi. He wears a hat, a simple act of defiance against the rule that Africans had to be bare-headed in front of white people. But that’s not where his defiance ended. A year later, Chilembwe would lead an uprising against colonial rule. He was killed, and his church destroyed.
In the photo, the two men are the same height, but here on the Fourth Plinth Chilembwe towers superhumanly over his colonialist counterpart. An exaggerated, symbolic role reversal. He is elevated, gloried, his story being given precedence, power, attention. Kambalu is asking you to raise up the narratives of Africans, of the colonised, above the narratives of the colonisers.
As a statue it’s not great, it’s a little flat and over-simplified, especially the clothing, which looks unfinished. But its relatively meagre aesthetic qualities are sort of unimportant, what matters is the idea, the power of putting this big, loud, in-your-face criticism of Britain right in the heart of the country. It’s a very simple sculpture with very simple symbolism. It directly, stridently and clearly criticises Britain’s colonial past, shining a blinding torchlight in the face of this nation’s violent, oppressive history. It’s a history that we as a nation haven’t confronted, let alone come to terms with. To place this here is to force viewers to consider the impact of empire, and we’ve got a lot of considering to do.