Two winning sculptures to be placed in London's famed Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth were revealed on Friday.
Tschabalala Self's Lady in Blue will be placed on the plinth in 2026 and Andra Ursuța's Untitled will replace it in 2028. BBC News reports that both were selected from a short list of 7 entries in a competition funded by the mayor of London, Arts Council England, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Lady in Blue depicts a black woman in a lapis lazuli blue dress and heels. Self said it is meant to represent "a quotidian figure, a person like all others in the city."
"In my mind I thought of her as a Londoner, a contemporary figure, a woman that many people could identify with," she said. "She's meant to represent many ideas, mainly the idea of a shared future."
She added, "All the other statues there are kind of these portraits of historical figures - people that have kind of been exalted above all other people in the community, whereas she is meant to be an individual that kind of speaks about a lot of our commonalities."
Untitled is a green resin sculpture meant to be a horse and rider covered in a shroud and is "said to embody various histories of public sculpture at a time when there is increasing debate about the use of public space," per the BBC.
Various pieces of art have stood in the square since 1999. 14 sculptures have been displayed on the fourth plinth every 2 years since.
The winners were picked by the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group and were partly based on feedback from the public.
