The Yale Center for British Art acquires work by Hew Locke

Hew Locke’s 2022 work, Ambassador 4, has been acquired by the Yale Center for British Art. The work will be included in a forthcoming exhibition at the YCBA, scheduled for fall 2025, that spans the artist’s career from the late 1990s to the present.
 
This sculpture is one of four Black figures on horseback, two women and two men, from the artist’s series The Ambassadors. Clad in black armor with skulls on her epaulets and an oversized turban, Ambassador 4 resembles a traditional bronze equestrian sculpture that has been saddled with allusions to colonial histories, referencing Locke’s multicultural upbringing.
 
“Hew has been making works about monuments for more than twenty years, critiquing the hidden and often violent histories behind statues that stand in our urban spaces,” says Martina Droth, Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the YCBA. “With The Ambassadors, he has arrived at a completely new and original conception of what a statue can be—it’s a proposal for a new commemorative landscape."
 
November 21, 2024