LONDON – Jen Reid, the Black Lives Matter protester, whose statue was erected in place of an overthrown slave trader in Bristol, England, said on Wednesday, just before the unauthorized installation, that she did not know if city authorities they would leave it there. a few months or a single day.
It turned out to be the last.
Workers removed the resin and steel statue of Mrs. Reid at dawn Thursday, 24 hours after its placement, raising a quick curtain over a guerilla art act that attracted widespread attention but did not impress city leaders. .
“I understand that people want expression, but the statue was lifted without permission,” Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees said in a Twitter post on Wednesday, shortly after the figure was installed. “Anything that is placed in the socket outside of the process that we have implemented will have to be removed.”
“The people of Bristol will decide their future,” Rees added of the socket where seventeenth-century slave trader Edward Colston once stood before being shot down by protesters last month and dumped into the nearby port.
Bristol City Council said it would hold the statue of Mrs. Reid, by sculptor Marc Quinn, at a local museum for him to “collect or donate to our collection.” Quinn, who created the sculpture within weeks after seeing a photograph of Mrs. Reid standing on the plinth during a protest, had no immediate response.
In a previous interview, Mr. Quinn said he did not expect Bristol to leave the statue, titled “A Surge of Power (Jen Reid),” in its place permanently, although he hoped it would be there long enough to spark conversation. on “how we commemorate people in statues”. He called it a “temporary prayer in conversation.”
Mrs. Reid, a fashion stylist, stepped onto the plinth during a Black Lives Matter demonstration after the crowd tore down the Colston bronze statue that had been in town since 1895, rolled it down the street, and dumped it to the port. Her pose, her right arm raised in a defiant gesture, inspired Quinn after seeing a photo on social media.
As part of a cohort of British visual artists known as Young British Artists, Quinn garnered attention in 2005 for a marble sculpture, “Alison Lapper Pregnant,” depicting a woman with a condition that left her with no arms or shortened legs. It was placed on a plinth in Trafalgar Square in London.
Mr. Quinn plans to install a piece next year on the steps of the New York Public Library that will consist of two identical buckets filled with frozen blood donated by thousands of refugees, as well as non-refugees. Inspired by the migration crisis, he aims to capture how, under his skin, people are all the same.
