I Am Queen Mary

Abstract

I Am Queen Mary is a transnational public art project created by La Vaughn Belle of the U.S. Virgin Islands and Jeannette Ehlers of Denmark—two artists connected by their shared Caribbean roots and colonial histories. Together they created the first collaborative sculpture to memorialize Denmark’s colonial impact in the Caribbean and those who fought against it. This monumental work debuted in March 2018 in front of the West Indian warehouse in Copenhagen in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the sale and transfer of the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands) to the United States. The first monument to a Black woman in Denmark, I Am Queen Mary made international headlines as a symbol that celebrates and centers the story of people who resisted Danish colonialism in the Caribbean. In 2020 the Danish government granted permission to permanently install I Am Queen Mary in front of a former colonial warehouse in Copenhagen, acknowledging the work’s shift from a temporary artwork to an important landmark in the city. To now build the permanent sculpture, and a twin monument on St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, an international funding campaign began in August 2021. The artists are still working on funding the project.I Am Queen Mary is a monument with many reference points and layers. Standing seven meters (twenty-three feet), appearing as a counterpart to a replica of Michelangelo’s David, the figure sits on top of a plinth made of coral stones cut out of the ocean by enslaved Africans. These stones make visible their labor and presence as foundational to the colonial societies. The figure is an allegorical portrait of Mary Thomas, a sugarcane plantation worker who came to be named one of the “Queens of the Fireburn” for leading the largest labor revolt in Danish colonial history in 1878. Fifty plantations and most of the town of Frederiksted in St. Croix were burned in protest of slavery-like conditions.I Am Queen Mary aims to change whose stories get to be told in the public space by centering the stories and agency of those who were brought to the Danish West Indies. This project also demonstrates how artists can be leaders in conversations around monuments and memory work around colonialism and slavery.