This archive report was first published on 16 July 2020.
On July 15, 2020, a temporary statue of Jen Reid, a Black Lives Matter protester, was erected in Bristol, England, in place of a toppled slave trader. The statue, created by artist Marc Quinn, was removed by workers at dawn the next day, just 24 hours after its installation.
The removal came after Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees expressed his disapproval of the unauthorized installation on Twitter. 'I understand people want expression, but the statue has been put up without permission,' Rees said. 'Anything put on the plinth outside of the process we've put in place will have to be removed.'
The statue, titled 'A Surge of Power (Jen Reid),' was created by Quinn after he saw a photograph of Reid standing on the plinth during a protest. Quinn had hoped the statue would be left in place long enough to provoke a conversation about how people are commemorated in statues.
Reid, a fashion stylist, had climbed onto the plinth during a Black Lives Matter demonstration after the crowd pulled down the bronze statue of slave trader Edward Colston. Her pose, with her right arm thrust upward in a defiant gesture, inspired Quinn's sculpture.
Quinn's work has previously drawn attention for its thought-provoking nature. In 2005, he created a marble sculpture, 'Alison Lapper Pregnant,' which depicted a woman with a condition that left her with no arms and shortened legs. The sculpture was placed on a plinth in Trafalgar Square in London.
