4th Plinth Trans sculpture

[Twistybranch]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13864589/Sculpture-featuring-faces-transgender-non-binary-gender-non-conforming-people-unveiled-fourth-plinth-Trafalgar-Square-theres-no-statue-late-Queen.html

New sculpture on the 4th plinth. It’s never been clearer that these are the faces of biological men. You see the bone structure, the brow bone, the jaw. Not hidden under make-up, filters or long hair.

Thank you to the artist for showing us the real face

it's a shit sculpture, by a weird person, who isn't British, the sculpture had nothing to do with with London, or Britain.

I love this total antidote to meaningless pretentious artspeak blurbery. I wish all art criticism was like this.

Yeah, that’s not simultaneously creepy and shit at all, is it 🙄

I don't really care what it is supposed to represent, it's a shit sculpture, by a weird person, who isn't British, the sculpture had nothing to do with with London, or Britain

A person who literally stole pieces of dead humans from a morgue to make 'art'.

This could not be more Silence of the Lambs if they tried.

That’s nightmare inducing….

This couldn't possibly be uglier 😱

Why do most of them look like David Walliams?

I haven’t seen it in real life yet.

The Fourth Plinth is not a place for the memorial or status-boosting figurative trad statues ‘honouring’ heroes, it has usually been subversive, playful, challenging, critical, etc. It is always temporary.

This is in the end a collection of human faces. We can’t see their ‘identity’, their thoughts or feelings, we don’t have to see what the artist sees or intends.

Perhaps some time they will choose the artist who made a whole wall of vagina mouldings made by 100s of women.

One of my favourites was Yinka Shobinare’s ship in a bottle with west African fabric patterned sails.

I might roll my eyes at the thoughts and other works of the artist, but in the end I will look at the sculpture and form my own view of it, enjoy it or not, irrespective of it’s stated subject matter.

(staunchly GC, just not writing off a sculpture just because it features trans people)

More nuanced review from the Guardian
amp.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/sep/18/teresa-margolles-fourth-plinth-review-transgender

Apparently it's a modern day tzompantli.
I'm looking forward to the fading part.
Then hopefully a glorious Sphinx like living tribute to the icon that is Larry.

I assumed it was a member of parliament who just happened to be passing by when the photographer was lurking.

The article says "At the beginning of her career she was given a stillborn fetus by a mother which she encased in cement"

This is not necessarily the sort of woman that can experience miscarriage. Just a creepy weirdo who uses other people's.

Nothing to do with the trans element, but the artwork itself gives me the creeps. Something about all those faces together - yuk.

As for the trans element, what's the point? As Glinner says, it's just misogynistic propaganda.

I’ve been looking for the article where I read that- I think they must have misquoted and then removed it. It was definitely there because I made the same assumption as others and then corrected myself. Apparently wrongly 🤣

Does the removal of information under privacy rules thing when you google mean that the person has definitely had their history scrubbed?

That would make sense if this person has an inconsistent past.

Exactly. As a piece of very unoriginal bland art, if it’s supposed to represent the diversity and something unique about trans people then it’s a bit of a fail.

As a pp said - the fact that it’s masks is the most telling signifier. Maybe it is a subversive piece? And if so then that is good art and I applaud it.

Either way - what a load of shit. Those plinths are too high up to appreciate anything meaningfully anyway.

I assumed it was a member of parliament who just happened to be passing by when the photographer was lurking

Yes, probably

I dread to think of the cost of it all!

If Larry the Cat doesn't get to go next my username inspired take on the current artwork should be next!

(staunchly GC, just not writing off a sculpture just because it features trans people)

it’s not that - it’s more complex than that. Firstly trans is so fashionable among arty types that anything with trans stuck on it goes straight to top of the queue. Quite literally - if you work in the arts there are endless grants and opportunities for ‘LGBTQ+” people and calls for submission on that theme - and all you have to do to get them is say you’re trans or your work is about trans and you’re in. It’s dishonest and attracts grifters. But worse than that, the sacred caste element means that no “trans” creator or work can be criticised and all judgement goes out the window. That’s bad for all the other artists who actually have something to say/offer but aren’t flavour of the month.

secondly there is nothing trans about this artwork. You look at it, you are not moved to think about gender at all. It’s biology, that’s all you can see, and the only reason it’s supposed to have something to say about transness is because the artist told us so. As PPs have said it’s unsuitable for a high plinth because it’s detailed and to see the faces properly you’d have to be up close. It’s only there because someone pasted “trans” onto a very basic, uninteresting idea.

I’m GC too (for want of a better term - I’m not actually opposed to all gender expression) but I am interested in art and I can imagine a trans artist making work that actually explored gender, identity and what being trans is like - and a trans person could be a great artist - I’m sure there are people doing powerful and interesting work. But because all judgement has been suspended and anything trans is automatically fabulous, what actually ends up being platformed has no quality control- it can be bland, incompetent or worse pornographic as has happened in scotland, it all gets a pass.

As for the casually passing fetish gear guy - it’s just taken as the norm now that there’s some link between genderism and fetishism/bondage gear/drag wear - why? Pics like this and the caption pretending this is just some random passer-by reinforce it. But feeling like you are or want to be the opposite sex to what you are, is a separate thing from sexuality supposedly - so we’re often told. What is the article trying to say? That mr fetish gear is the intended audience? It’s all so confused.

No disrespect to the good burghers of Stoney Stanton but this reads like actual comedy 🤣

I was struck by that photo too. On these boards, when a poster says something about a correlation between middle aged male TW and AGP or fetishes of other sorts, a trans'ally' invariably comes on to say what a tiny minority those people are, or that they are simply a figment of a transphobic imagination, or that we're all hysterical prudes.
So it seems that TRAs don't want this kind of image to be associated with trans, yet quite often this is the image that heavily TRA-captured corporations use.

Great artwork there BB!

If Larry the Cat doesn't get to go next my username inspired take on the current artwork should be next!

That's awesome, think you should send it in next time there is a call.

OhMaria2 · Yesterday 21:24

Has anybody said Transfalgar Square yet, or am I late to the party?

No, you were the first.

And damn it! I wish I'd thought of it!

According to that Guardian review, the male person in fetish gear in the photograph is one of the participants in the project.

Thanks for linking to the article.

Two quotes from it:

“Margolles finds in that eerie Mesoamerican monument the inspiration for her memorial to her friend Karla, a transgender woman who was murdered in Juárez in 2015.”

“ “Eleven women are killed in this country every day,” the director of Amnesty in Mexico told the Guardian in 2022. “We have at least 20,000 women who are missing in Mexico.” Juárez, where Karla died, is one of the most dangerous places for women in the country.”

So in the eight calendar years from January 2016 to December 2023, more than 32,000 women will have been murdered in Mexico.