Colonial-era racial justice pioneer to stand tall on London’s Fourth Plinth

The Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group announced two winning artworks which have been chosen by the public to stand in Trafalgar Square in 2022 and 2024. The 2022 commission is Samson Kambalu’s work, Antelope, which depicts a 1914 photograph of Baptist preacher John Chilembwe and European missionary John Chorley wearing hats in Malawi, which was illegal for black people to do at the time, in an act of defiance against racial injustice. The 2024 commission is the work of Teresa Margolles’, which depicts casts of the faces of 850 transgender people from London. The ‘life masks’ will be arranged round the plinth in the form of a Tzompantli, a skull rack from Mesoamerican civilisations.