Trafalgar Square, one of London’s most visited landmarks, is marked by four plinths, upon which rests three permanent sculptures. For years an empty fourth plinth stood until Dame Prue Leith, then chair of the Royal Society of Arts suggested the plinth should host art work. After much debate, the Mayor of London’s Fourth Plinth Programme was born, hosting contemporary sculptures on rotation. Recently, Samson Kambalu, a renowned contemporary artist and author who hails from Malawi and is based in Oxford won the opportunity to exhibit under the Fourth Plinth Programme, resulting in “Antelope.”

Based on a photograph of Baptist preacher and pan-Africanist, John Chilembwe, and European missionary, John Chorley, taken in 1914 at the opening Chilembwe’s new church in Nyasaland, now Malawi, “Antelope” commemorates the moment by restaging the photograph. Kambalu portrays Chilembwe larger than life upon the plinth as he keeps his hat on, in defiance of the colonial rule forbidding Africans from wearing hats in front of white people. Chorley maintains life-size, thereby elevating Chilembwe’s story and bringing awareness to the “hidden narratives of underrepresented peoples” and calling attention to “distortions in conventional narratives of the British empire.”