LONDON – If for a moment it captured the Black Lives Matter protests that raged across the UK after George Floyd’s death, it was of protesters tearing down a statue of slave trader Edward Colston and throwing it into the port of Bristol.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, and without the knowledge of local authorities, a team led by artist Marc Quinn erected a replacement.
The life-size black resin sculpture depicts Jen Reid, a resident of Bristol, about 100 miles west of London, with her fist raised in a salute by Black Power.
Reid had stood on the same plinth and made the same gesture after the Colston statue was knocked down last month. Her husband took a photo of her and the following Instagram post went viral.
Quinn, one of the UK’s best-known sculptors, saw that photo and asked Reid if he would work with him to immortalize it in sculpture, titled “A Wave of Power (Jen Reid) 2020”.
“When I was standing on the socket, and raised my arm in a Black Power salute, it was totally spontaneous, I didn’t even think about it,” Reid said in a statement Wednesday. “It was like an electric charge of energy was going through me.”
Seeing the Colson statue thrown into the water “felt like a truly historic moment,” he said, and his “immediate thoughts were for the enslaved people who died at Colston’s hands and to empower them.”
He added: “I wanted to empower George Floyd, I wanted to empower black people like me who have suffered injustice and inequality. A surge of power for all of them.”
Quin said: “Edward Colston’s pedestal in Bristol seems like the right place to share this sculpture about fighting racism, which is without a doubt the other virus facing society today.”
But the artist does not see sculpture “as a permanent solution to what should be there; it is a spark that we hope will help draw continued attention to this vital and pressing issue.”
Reid said he would like to see the statue instead. But Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees said in a statement that “it was not requested and permission was not given for it to be installed.”
The mayor, who is black, previously said he saw the Colston statue as “an affront” but that, as an elected official, he did not feel he could tolerate the way it was knocked down. Prime Minister Boris Johnson described his expulsion as a “criminal act” and then a 24-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of criminal harm.
In his statement on Wednesday, the mayor said the future of the plinth “must be decided by the people of Bristol,” but described Quin’s sculpture as “the work and decision of a London-based artist.”
The UK was one of many countries where people demonstrated in solidarity after Floyd’s death in Minneapolis in May.
Colston has been the center of attention of British anti-racism activists for many years. He made his fortune in the 17th century slave trade, donating much of it to the city of Bristol when he died.
