Lady in Blue: Trafalgar Square's Next Icon Arrives 10 September

London's most argued-over pedestal has a new tenant. Tschabalala Self's Lady in Blue will be unveiled on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square on 10 September — a date confirmed by the Mayor of London's office — becoming the 16th commission in the programme's history, following Teresa Margolles' Mil Veces un Instante.

The work is a bronze figure of a contemporary young woman, patinated in lapis lazuli blue — a pigment prized since antiquity, now walking into the twenty-first century. 'She is a woman walking forward into our collective future with ambition and purpose,' Self says. Born in New York in 1990, Self works across painting, printmaking and sculpture, with a practice built around representations of the human figure — particularly women. An everywoman, raised above the square where the city argues with itself: the placement is the point.

'She is a woman walking forward into our collective future with ambition and purpose.'

The unveiling is timed as the anchor of London Sculpture Week, running 19–27 September across the city — Frieze Sculpture, East Bank, Sculpture in the City and The Line, connected by public art tours, workshops, a symposium and artist performances. For nine days, the whole city becomes the gallery. Trafalgar Square just gets the front cover.