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First public statue of a black woman
By Valentine Low, Evening Standard 05.02.08
Bond of hope: The completed model of Aleix Barbat's 10ft statue of a mother and child
Artists: Cecile Nobrega with the late sculptor Ian Walters
When this sculpture is unveiled in a south London park later this year, it will represent the culmination of a dream that began 30 years ago.
That was when Guyanese-born Cecile Nobrega wrote The Bronze Woman, a poem celebrating the achievements of black women in Britain.
Ten years ago, the former teacher - now 89 and living in Stockwell - started campaigning for a work of art to be created to express what she wrote in verse.
A sculptor was found - Ian Walters, who created the statue of Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square - but he died before he could finish the piece and Aleix Barbat took over the project.
When it is finished, the 10ft bronze of a woman holding a boy aloft will, according to its backers, be the first statue of a black woman to be displayed publicly in England.
Barbat, 30, who is at the Heatherley's School of Fine Art, said that when he took over the project Walters had only completed a foot-high maquette.
"The only thing I have stuck to was the original pose," he said. "The way the thing has been modelled is very different."
He added: "I wanted to create a strong image of a confident woman holding up a child and looking into each other's eyes.
"I wanted something very motherly but also a woman with dignity and pride."
The statue is now at the end of modelling phase, when a mould is taken before the casting of the bronze.
It will be unveiled in Stockwell Memorial Gardens in June, where 60 years ago a former air raid shelter was used as temporary housing for the first Caribbean immigrants arriving on the SS Windrush.
Tanzeen Ahmed of Olmec, a community investment foundation which backed the project, said the statue was being completed in a highly significant year for the black community.
"It is the 60th anniversary of the Windrush and last year it was 200 years since the Act of Parliament abolishing the transatlantic slave trade," she said.
"For us the poem - and the statue - is about hope. It is a message of strength.
"The bond between the mother and child is a bond of hope - he represents something positive that she wants for the new generation."
