Tschabalala Self’s woman in blue in Trafalgar Square arrived on the Fourth Plinth in London, giving the square a new temporary figure with a long stride and platform shoes. The sculpture, Lady in Blue, was unveiled into a site built for a statue that was never installed.
Fourth Plinth Since 1841
The Fourth Plinth was built in 1841 for an equestrian statue that was never erected. That failed original purpose is the point now: the base has become a rotating stage for temporary art works since 1999, so each new commission is measured against how it changes the square’s sightlines and its argument about public space.
Lady in Blue is described as a polychrome woman with a polished surface and a draping blue skirt. The blue is lapis lazuli, with ultramarine in the mix, and the review reads the figure as both theatrical and grounded, which is unusual for a work standing in one of London’s most visible open-air settings.
Ecce Homo and Alison Lapper Pregnant
The review places Self’s sculpture beside Mark Wallinger’s Ecce Homo and Marc Quinn’s Alison Lapper Pregnant, both human-figure works that shaped the Fourth Plinth’s public reputation. It also invokes Umberto Boccioni through Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, widening the frame from single-object viewing to a history of bodies cast as motion, pressure, and presence.
One moment I was bored and irritated by the official speeches before the unveiling of Tschabalala Self’s sculpture on the fourth plinth, which so insisted on its sociopolitical worth it sounded like Soviet propaganda. Then the review turns: “It hit me like a thunder clap.”
London and
The review sets Lady in Blue against a London where Tommy Robinson supporters marched for a mono-racial, white nationalist UK, making the plinth less like decoration than a public test of who gets centered in the square. That gives the unveiling a practical edge for visitors and drivers passing Trafalgar Square: the work is not tucked away in a gallery, but placed where the city cannot avoid it.
For now, the most useful fact is also the simplest one. Self has put a Black woman at the center of Trafalgar Square, and the Fourth Plinth’s temporary format means the work will be seen as part of an ongoing sequence rather than a permanent fixture, which is exactly why the open question is how long Lady in Blue will remain there.
