British artist blocked from ‘reinterpreting' statue of colonial Belgian king

Telegraph

4 hours ago

A British artist has been blocked from 'reinterpreting' a controversial statue of a colonial Belgian king.
Brixton-based sculptor Hew Locke OBE was commissioned to recontextualise the equestrian statue of King Leopold II by the council of the seaside resort of Ostend last year.
After recent elections, the new council told Mr Locke it was cancelling his plan for the first work of its kind in Belgium because there had not been enough consultation.
'Their behaviour has damaged my trust,' a 'really disappointed' Mr Locke, told The Telegraph.
He said: 'We received an email saying that 'the city council considers the current proposal to be too impactful for both the site and the residents of Ostend'.
'I don't know how they knew it was 'too impactful for the citizens' if they believed there had not been enough consultation.'
The often vandalised statue of Leopold on the promenade shows him being thanked by grateful Congolese subjects for saving them from Arab slavers.
The King ruled the Congo Free State as an absolute monarch, pillaging it of lucrative rubber and minerals during a genocide that killed millions and inspired Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness.
Belgium has struggled to confront its colonial past. In the wake of Black Lives Matter, some Belgian cities removed or hid busts of the murderous monarch as a 'Leopold Must Fall' campaign gathered steam.
The 1931 statue is protected under Belgian law, which meant Mr Locke could not add to or alter it.
So he decided to 'interrupt the view' of the statue with five poles topped with golden symbols of the Congo's exploitation, including a severed hand and Leopold's decapitated head.
The king's severed head is a nod to the severed heads put on stakes by Kurtz, the corrupted ivory trader in Heart of Darkness, which is set in Belgium-ruled Congo.
Belgian colonialists infamously cut off the hands of Congolese who failed to meet their rubber collection quotas.
The £70,600 work was set to be installed at the end of this year after Mr Locke's proposal was chosen ahead of 10 others.
Photos of the 11 competing proposals were displayed near the site for a month and a half, and there were information sessions as well as a website consultation with residents.
Judith Ooms, the Left-wing alderman for Urban Development, said: 'I have no position on the artistic quality of the work. As previously determined, it is an intervention. But one that brings about a transformation of an iconic site.
'This kind of radical transformation must take place in broad consultation. I can only conclude that this artwork, in its current form and at the current locations, has not been sufficiently supported.'
The council had suggested an alternative location for the installation, behind the statue, but Mr Locke, who initially offered to cut the length of the artwork from 10 to five years, rejected that.
'The city's suggestions of moving the poles further away from the statue would mean that they no longer would be disrupting the view…so this would make my artwork meaningless,' he said.
'I was literally interrupting the view and story presented by the statue. Viewers would not have been able to ignore the intervention, and would have to question the meaning and history and symbolism of the monument.'
Lieven Miguel Kandolo, a Belgian-Congolese Green politician, blamed 'the Right-wing shift in politics' in Belgium, which held a general election last year.
'Personally, I would have preferred to see the statue of Leopold II disappear. This repurposing was a minimum offer for me. And Ostend can't even manage that,' he told the De Standaard newspaper.