An artist took the initiative to erect, on Wednesday July 15, the statue of a young demonstrator of the Black lives matter movement, in place of that of a slave merchant unbolted in early June in Bristol.
Entitled "A Rise in Power" ("A Surge of Power"), the new sculpture by Marc Quinn was installed on the base where the statue of Edward Colston was by the artist's teams, without the town hall. from Bristol know.
The large black steel piece represents Jen Reid, a protester who was photographed with her fist raised on the empty plinth of the old statue of Edward Colston, a late 17th century slave trader.
A sculpture of a Black Lives Matter protest has replaced a slave trader statue in the UK.
The work is officially titled "A Surge of Power (Jen Reid) 2020" and depicts a woman with her fist raised in a Black Power salute. https://t.co/yvhQDMIiOi pic.twitter.com/jWfqnJzBfR
A great democratic consultation
This sculpture, which had been controversial for years, had been unbolted and then thrown into the river in early June, during demonstrations of the Black Lives Matter movement following the death in late May of George Floyd, a black American killed by a police officer.
These demonstrations were accompanied by a series of degradations of statues of contested personalities because of their involvement in the slave trade or racist statements.
The fate of the statue, recovered since, had not been fixed. The artist Banksy, originally from Bristol, had proposed to put it back on its base and to add statues of demonstrators to the unbolted. The city's mayor, Marvin Rees, had promised to launch a major democratic consultation on this subject.
"Damn cheeky"
Present during the installation of the statue which represents it, Jen Reid judged the action "simply incredible" and "damn cheeky". This will allow "to continue the conversation" on the slave-holding past of the United Kingdom, she declared to the daily The Guardian.
"Jen had already created the statue when she stood on the base and raised her arm in the air. We crystallized it," said Marc Quinn.
Edward Colston got rich in the slave trade. He would have sold 100,000 slaves from West Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas between 1672 and 1689, before using his fortune to finance the development of Bristol, which has long earned him a reputation as a philanthropist.
With AFP
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