Samson Kambalu’s sculpture Antelope, depicts a 1914 photograph of Baptist preacher John Chilembwe and European missionary John Chorley.

It has been chosen alongside Teresa Margolles’s sculpture which features casts of the faces of 850 trans people.

They will go on display in 2022 and 2024 respectively.

Kambalu said the original picture his artwork was based on “looks ordinary” at a first glance.

“But when you research the photograph, you find that actually there’s subversion there, because at that time in 1914 it was forbidden for Africans to wear hats before white people,” he said.

“For me, the Fourth Plinth and my proposals were always going to be a litmus test for how much I belong to British society as an African and as a cosmopolitan, and so this fills me with joy and excitement.”

In his design, Chilembwe is larger than life while Chorley is life-size. The judges said by increasing his scale, the artist elevated Chilembwe and his story, revealing the hidden narratives of underrepresented people in the history of the British Empire in Africa and beyond.

He added: “When I proposed, this was before Black Lives Matter and George Floyd had been taken into the mainstream and I thought I was just going to be like the underdog, because I had made up my mind that I was going to propose something meaningful to me as an African.

“But we have to start putting detail to the black experience, we have to start putting detail to the African experience, to the post-colonial experience.” – BBC