Belgian City Cancels Hew Locke Sculpture Commission
147June 24, 2025
The city of Ostend, Belgium, has halted construction of a set of sculptures by British Guyanese artistHew Lockethat were to have recontextualized a public monument to Leopold II, citing a lack of consultation with the public. Locke in 2023 beat out ten other shortlisted competitors to win the commission, which aimed to address Leopold’s exploitation of Congolese laborers while allowing the memorial to the onetime Belgian king to remain in place.
Leopold during his reign, which spanned the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, established what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo but was at that time known as the Congo Free State. He treated the African nation as his personal possession, subjecting its citizens to forced labor and torture, looting its raw materials, and negatively impacting its population, which declined by ten million under his rule.
Locke’s winning commission would have placed five golden sculptures referencing colonial history atop posts placed in front of and below the statue, where they would appear in the sightlines of those apprehending the monument from the front. Per a 2024 articleinThe Telegraph, the proposed sculptures included an elephant’s head, referring to the ivory trade; a severed clenched fist, referencing the Belgian colonialist practice of lopping off the hands of workers who failed to collect their quota of rubber; and the disembodied head of Leopold himself.
The work was to have been in place for ten years, and determination of the final sculptures was to have been made with input from local residents. Last week, however, Ostend’s newly elected city council announced the project was being scrubbed owing to lack of proper public consultation preceding the awarding of the commission, and that alternative proposals would instead be considered.
Locke in anInstagram postsaid that he had told the council that he was open to consulting with more people, and that he had offered to reduce the installation’s duration from ten to five years, but received no response. “The last piece of correspondence I had from the council was the one where they officially told me of their decision,” he toldArtnet News.“I haven’t heard anything from them since. I had asked them on more than one occasion that we work jointly on a press release to announce their decision, but they didn’t respond to this, and just put out their own statement.”
Artforumhas reached out to Ostend’s city council for comment.