Abstract
This study examines the (ir)relevance of the continued public retention of British imperial statuary, with a focus on the Queen Victoria statue at the William Humphreys Gallery in Kimberley. Through a critical analysis of the role of Queen Victoria as monarch and how figures like Cecil John Rhodes flourished during her reign, the study makes the case that Queen Victoria was complicit in the wrongs of empire. The study playfully, yet also seriously, creates worlds that represent and reference decoloniality’s preoccupation with the denouncement of coloniality. It explores cultural production and how statuary has historically been an important aspect of its maintenance. The position taken in the dissertation is that the removal of statuary should be followed by restitution. This is important because little to no consideration is given to the aftermath of removal.
The dissertation also engages satirically with the possibility of returning statuary representing Queen Victoria to Britain. Together with the body of work that accompanies it – painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture, which jointly constitute an installation – the study crafts a subtle yet clear visual language that integrates different modalities of message-making.
The analysis of works by South African artists Sethembile Msezane and Paul Emmanuele provides this study with an artistic context. These artists do not explicitly argue for the removal of statuary, but that their approaches are equally important in establishing the problem with pre-1994 statuary.