10/09/2026
Fourth plinth
Tschabalala Self’s Lady in Blue review – this striding scupture fills the fourth plinth with humour and life
Trafalgar Square, London
The swaggering statue’s luscious collision of brown and blue could stop traffic – and serves as a reminder of the big, beautiful, multicultural world we enjoy
Jonathan Jones
Thu 10 Sep 2026 17.09 CEST
It hit me like a thunder clap. One moment I was bored and irritated by the official speeches before the unveiling of Tschabalala Self’s sculpture on the fourth plinth, which so insisted on its sociopolitical worth it sounded like Soviet propaganda. Then the covering slid off and I was in love with the Lady in Blue.
Self has created one of the most beautiful sculptures put on Trafalgar Square’s empty plinth – and I don’t mean that in a cool, formalist way. There is a serious danger of traffic accidents as drivers passing the square stare a little too long at the Lady’s generous proportions, her long stride in platform shoes, her intensely physical, confident being.
‘I’m not nervous, I’m ready’: Tschabalala Self on racist vandals and her bold striding woman for the Fourth Plinth
Lady in Blue brilliantly exploits the potential of the long rectangular plinth, built in 1841 for an equestrian statue that was never erected, to encompass a lolloping human gait. This is a homage to walking, and to Umberto Boccioni’s futurist strider Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, with Self’s figure extrapolated upward from her wide and fast walk, a massive curved leg thrusting forward out of her draping blue skirt, her head
