The British-Guyanese artist Hew Locke has been left “really disappointed” by a Belgian council’s decision to cancel the production of a public art work which would have recontextualised a statue of Leopold II. The work, which would have “disrupted” an equestrian statue of the Belgian king, was commissioned by Ostend council last November.
The 1931 statue of Leopold II, located on the city seafront, depicts the king being thanked by grateful Congolese subjects for saving them from Arab slavers. Leopold II, Belgium’s longest reigning monarch from 1865 to 1909, is notorious for instigating a brutal colonial regime in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Locke says he planned to place five masts showing symbols linked to the colonisation of Congo around the historic equestrian monument. However, in an online statement, the council says: “The City would rather focus on making the theme of decolonisation a topic of discussion and enter into dialogue with the residents.
“In the short term, the City will design a memorial square together with the people of Ostend at the site…this should create a space where people can enter into dialogue in the context of the fight against racism and discrimination and where education is central.”
The Art Newspaper understands that the residents of Ostend were consulted by the city council last year, prior to Locke’s piece being selected from 11 shortlisted artists.
A spokesperson for Locke says: “There was then a local election; there is now a new party running the town hall. They say there was not enough consultation.
“So Hew said to them, naturally enough, let’s do some more. He suggested this as well as suggesting shortening the length of the temporary commission [from ten to five years].” Locke says the council has not yet responded.
Around 10 million Congolese people are understood to have died under Leopold II’s regime as a result of famine, disease and violence. In 2022, the Ostend statue was covered in red paint by a protest group known as The Naughty Ostender.
Two years earlier, a sculpture of Leopold II in the city of Antwerp was set on fire, before authorities took it down. The same year the University of Mons removed a bust of the late king.
Locke has previously reconfigured imperialist symbols and figures. In 2022 he reimagined a controversial Queen Victoria statue in Birmingham, UK (Foreign Exchange). In 2006, as part of his Restoration series, he doctored a photograph of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol, UK, so that it was engulfed in a cascade of gaudy decorations and jewellery, including skulls, coins and slave ships.
