Tschabalala Self brings a striding black woman to the Fourth Plinth, after vandals whitewashed her last UK work

A plinth with history

The Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square has never been short of controversy, but Tschabalala Self’s forthcoming commission, Lady in Blue, arrives freighted with a more personal kind of tension. The US artist’s towering, painted bronze depicts a black woman striding forward - a deliberately upright, forward-facing figure that Self describes as resolutely hopeful. It is her first major UK public work since 2022, when a previous sculpture was vandalised in what she calls, without hesitation, “a completely racist act”.

That earlier piece, Seated, was unveiled at Coal Drops Yard in King’s Cross in 2022 to no apparent trouble. It was a large, brightly coloured bronze of a black woman sitting on a chair - formally close cousin to the new plinth work. Problems began only after it travelled to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea. Within a week, according to Self, someone had spray-painted the sculpture white - but only on the skin. The detail matters: this was not indiscriminate graffiti but a targeted act aimed squarely at the figure’s blackness.

The catch: public art, private cost

Here is where the story moves from anecdote to something the industry needs to sit with. Public sculpture commissions - whether council-funded, gallery-backed or, in the Fourth Plinth’s case, run through the Greater London Authority’s long-standing programme - are pitched as civic gestures: art for everyone, in shared space, free to view. But “shared space” cuts both ways. An artist placing a body that isn’t white, male or classical into a public plinth is also placing it beyond the protection of a gallery’s four walls, invigilators and CCTV. The De La Warr Pavilion incident is a reminder that the economics of public art rarely include a serious budget line for security, restoration or the emotional labour of an artist watching their work defaced.

Self is candid that the initial reaction was pain - “that someone had enacted violence on an object I had imbued with love and affection” - but nothing in the Guardian interview suggests she was compensated, or that the venue or commissioning body issued any specific redress beyond, presumably, cleaning the work. Whether the incident prompted any review of security protocols for touring public sculpture, or whether the cost of repair fell on the venue, the artist or an insurer, isn’t stated. That gap is worth flagging: institutions are quick to trumpet the unveiling of ambitious, diverse public art, less quick to publish what happens - financially or procedurally - when it’s attacked.

What we actually know

What’s verifiable here is straightforward: Self unveiled Seated at Coal Drops Yard in 2022; it was later shown at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, where it was vandalised with white spray paint applied specifically to the figure’s skin within its first week on display. Self is now preparing Lady in Blue for the Fourth Plinth, a painted bronze in the same visual register - scale, colour, a black female figure - as the piece that was attacked. Her stated attitude, in her own words, is one of readiness rather than nerves.

Everything beyond that is artist testimony and interpretation, which is fair enough for a profile piece but shouldn’t be mistaken for a full account of what institutions did, or didn’t do, in response.

The takeaway

The unveiling of Lady in Blue will generate the usual wave of coverage about London’s most democratic art slot. The more useful story is the one buried in the interview: a major public artwork was racially vandalised in 2022, and there’s no public record of what accountability, security review or cost fell to the venues involved. Trafalgar Square’s plinth committee would do well to publish exactly what protections are in place this time - not just for the sculpture, but for the artist putting her work, again, into the open.