The public’s favourite will be the next sculpture to adorn Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth after Samson Kambalu’s Antelope was chosen for the spot.
The work, which will go on view next year, restages a 1914 photograph of Baptist preacher and pan-Africanist John Chilembwe and European missionary John Chorley as a sculpture.
It shows Chilembwe towering over his white counterpart and with his hat on in defiance of colonial rules that forbade Africans from wearing hats in front of white people. The original picture was taken in 1914 at the opening of Chilembwe’s new church in Nyasaland, now Malawi.
A year later, he led an uprising against colonial rule and was killed and his church, which had taken years to build, was destroyed.
The work came out top of a survey last week to find out which of the six submissions people liked most with more than half the people asked (53 per cent) saying it was their favourite.
Teresa Margolles’s work 850 Improntas (850 Imprint), which features casts of the faces of 850 trans people from London and around the world, will replace Antelope on the plinth in 2024.
