Tschabalala Self is relentlessly positive and unstoppably optimistic. The US artist is waiting for the unveiling of Lady in Blue, her new sculpture for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, London, a towering, colourful painted bronze of a black woman striding (positively, optimistically) into the future. Self seems resolutely hopeful about the work, which is pretty impressive considering what happened to her last public sculpture in the UK. \u201cYeah,\u201d she says, speaking from her home in upstate New York. \u201cI mean, that was a completely racist act.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2022, Self unveiled Seated at Coal Drops Yard in King\u2019s Cross, London. Like Lady in Blue, it was a vast, brightly painted bronze depiction of a black woman, this time seated demurely on a chair. After being shown at Coal Drops Yard without incident, it was moved to the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea, where the reception wasn\u2019t quite as warm. \u201cWithin the first week,\u201d says Self, \u201cit was spraypainted white, but only on the skin of the sculpture.\u201d As vandalism goes, it doesn\u2019t get much more pointed, or racist. \u201cThe first feeling I had was just pain that my sculpture had been harmed. That someone had enacted violence on an object I had imbued with love and affection.\u201d<\/p>\n
double quotation markMere personhood is an act of dignity. It\u2019s courageous to be a human being<\/p>\n
The Pavilion wanted to organise a protest in response to the vandalism, but Self pushed for a community cleanup day instead. \u201cI felt like that would be more cathartic, because a lot of people were appalled.\u201d Hundreds queued to take part and, by the end of the day, all the paint had been removed, leaving nothing for the restorers to do. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t my first time experiencing racism,\u201d says Self, \u201cbut it was the first time my sculpture had been defaced.\u201d<\/p>\n
Self\u2019s public sculpture Seated in Bexhill On Sea, where it was defaced \u2013 then restored in a community cleanup effort Photograph: Thierry Bal<\/p>\n
Born in Harlem, New York, in 1990, Self has an ultra-distinctive approach to collaged pop figuration and political idealism, which has made her a young star in the art world. Her work is in MoMA, the Guggenheim and the Whitney in New York and the Albertina Museum in Vienna. She has had exhibitions at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and the ICA Boston and is represented by some of the world\u2019s chicest commercial galleries. Her work is a lurid, vivid, super-colourful, mega-joyful celebration of everyday bodies. She\u2019s like a politically engaged, millennial New York version of the French pop modernist Niki de Saint Phalle<\/a>, famed for her appealingly exuberant \u201cNanas\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe central message of my work is that all people should feel embodied,\u201d she says. \u201cThey should feel confident and comfortable: empowered in their body. I think that\u2019s a human right. My work is really about allowing people to understand that their physical experience is something they should relish, and to enjoy the physicality of a lived experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Self talks like this a lot \u2013 positively, optimistically, almost politically, about the idea of bodies and \u201cvessels\u201d and confidence. \u201cMere personhood,\u201d she says, \u201cis an act of dignity. It\u2019s courageous to be a human being. That is an act worth valuing.\u201d<\/p>\n Giant steps \u2026 Self with a model of Lady in Blue, at the announcement of the shortlist for the fourth plinth commission. Photograph: Leon Neal\/Getty Images<\/p>\n This empowering, direct, hopeful message sets Self a little at odds with the hyper-critical, seriously conceptual and often lofty artworks that have sat on the fourth plinth in recent years. How does Lady in Blue sit with Teresa Margolles\u2019s wall of life-masks<\/a> taken from hundreds of transgender and non-binary people, which it\u2019s replacing, or Samson Kambalu<\/a>\u2019s defiantly anti-colonialist portrait of Pan-African preacher John Chilembwe in 2022? Self\u2019s work looks almost shockingly simple and joyful in comparison. Where\u2019s the invective, the anger, the criticality, the radicalism we\u2019ve come to expect from contemporary art?<\/p>\n It turns out that joy twinned with simplicity is the radical thing. \u201cLet\u2019s say you\u2019re a designer, right?\u201d says Self. \u201cTo make something simple but functional is seen as the height of conceptual rigour. But somehow when it comes to fine arts, people equate simplicity with something being devoid of conceptual rigour.\u201d<\/p>\n So Self rejects all of that, opting for legibility above all else. \u201cIf an artwork doesn\u2019t move a large group of people from different educational, class and racial backgrounds, if it doesn\u2019t move people in a relatively uniform way, I would say that\u2019s more of a deficit of the maker than the audience. If the art\u2019s strong enough, it should be legible to some degree to whoever comes across it. That\u2019s part of the skill of being a great artist.\u201d<\/p>\n Work by Self at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 2020. Photograph: Guy Bell\/Rex\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n When people discuss Self\u2019s work, they often emphasise that this is art that celebrates black bodies. Does she feel this is too reductive for someone with such a wide-ranging message? \u201cIt is over-simplistic and very limiting. The work is often described in that context, but that\u2019s very superficial. All of the figures are black because I make figures that reflect my physical experience. But they are meant to represent human experience that\u2019s not limited by racial identity.\u201d<\/p>\n