Artist Highlight - Fernando Sánchez Castillo

Artist Highlight with Fernando Sánchez Castillo

In the exhibition Race: Power, Resistance & Change, Spanish artist Fernando Sánchez Castillo draws on an American oral history that the Statue of Liberty – the neoclassical sculpture located on Liberty Island off the coast of New York City – was possibly imagined as a Black woman to honor the end of slavery in the United States.

Fernando Sánchez Castillo’s sculpture, A Proposal, brings that possibility to life – casting Lady Liberty with new features and meaning. 

In this artist highlight, Fernando Sánchez Castillo reflects on the role of history in his work and his reimagination of the Statue of Liberty.

This interview was conducted by Cassie Kaawaloa, Community Affairs Manager at the Museum of Us. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Can you tell us about your experience transforming Lady Liberty into A Proposal? What conversation do you hope to spark, or what do you hope people take away from the piece?

Fernando Sánchez Castillo (FSC): In Europe and Latin America, and in older U.S. cities like New York, sculptures in the streets are common. But in Los Angeles, this presence is missing in most neighborhoods. This pedagogic tool of power to direct people is not there.

I thought that maybe in California it’s possible to imagine the Statue of Liberty with another face. I don’t know if it’s a man or a woman. There’s no gender, no race, just a slightly different face. It’s still green, still a sculpture, but different. 

I made [the first version of A Proposal] the exact size of Michelangelo’s David – five meters, fifteen centimeters – because that sculpture represents the people, the population. David was made to confront the Medici and show that the Republic of Florence would defeat tyranny. David, a small figure, is powerful enough to kill Goliath with intelligence and a simple tool. Whenever I can, I use that scale to show that things are possible; you can be small and still defeat bigger enemies, threats, fears.

I’m also interested in the history of the Statue of Liberty. August Bartholdi was an abolitionist. He conceived the sculpture to honor the slaves who fought in the Civil War for freedom. But at that time, and sadly still nowadays, it was impossible to have a representation of that spirit. When you do public art, there are many pressures. Everyone has an opinion, especially those who provide money or permits. So, the statue that was possibly meant to commemorate the freedom of enslaved people who fought in the Civil War became a monument to the independence of the United States.

I think I can feel the suffering of Bartholdi, because he was a convinced abolitionist. He had already made prototypes [of the Statue of Liberty] with non-occidental faces for the Suez Canal lighthouse in Egypt. I wanted to imagine completing his work today. That’s why the title is “Proposal,”[it is] a proposal Bartholdi might have made but that was altered. 

When you look at the Statue of Liberty and see the chains at her feet and connections to the end of slavery, I think, “Why not create a new version?”

Bartholdi was a European sculptor and the Statue of Liberty comes into the European sculptural tradition. Of course, I could not escape this legacy I studied academically, and I had to free myself from much of that through philosophy to learn new ways of looking at people and the planet. This work is also an attempt to clean the behavior of many European sculptors who didn’t consider “the other.” I imagine he [Bartholdi] was happy enough about this work, but not totally. I think humanity needs to know about this suffering of the artist. Humanity needs new icons, new models, new behaviors.

Sculptures are just sculptures, but sometimes you need a small object to imagine different things – a proof of a better world. That’s what I call a sculpture. 

Q: Much of your work explores and re-examines historical narratives. What draws you to the past, and how do you approach it?

FSC: A philosopher, Michel Foucault, once said that we can talk about the future, but the only thing we truly have is the past.

With these bricks, I try to understand where we are now and imagine the future in a positive way, not a catastrophic one. I try to make small changes in our intellectual landscape, in behaviors and culture, to imagine a better world. That would be the leitmotif of my work.

I’m very happy to have a piece featured in San Diego. I was teaching in Los Angeles in 1998 where I was hired to teach the Latino community in Spanish. The same year I arrived, a law changed and I was no longer allowed to teach in Spanish. So, I had to teach in English. My students thought I was French, as I didn’t have the level of English needed to teach kids. 

I thought, “How weird is this world?” I had to learn English but also learn how I could help the people of California, the students. Now those kids probably have kids of their own. 

So how could I help them imagine, have the tools to use imagination, to escape, fight, resist, and change things in specific ways? That was my goal then, and that practice I used with the students taught me a lot. I learned a lot from the kids and people in California, and formed a way of working that still persists now.

Q: Are there other historical figures or events you’d like to address in future work?

FSC: There are many. I make small plastic figurines of the larger sculptures. These are “spread monuments,” meant to circulate among people. You can put them in your pocket, take them home, give them to your kids or grandparents. They become conversational pieces about hidden stories or people who deserve monuments but don’t have them.

I’m thinking of many: Navalny in Russia. Tank Man from China, who opposed state violence to defend students’ voices. Conrad Schumann, the soldier who jumped the Berlin Wall. 

I realized sculptures are mainly male-orientated. If it’s not the Virgin Mary or the Statue of Liberty. Even toys are mostly men. I wondered, what if Rodin’s The Thinker were a woman? We have made some prototypes of that.

I often say “we” because you always need a community. You don’t create for a client; you create for a community.

In Spain, we still have much to do despite us being a full democracy. I’m working on a horse with no rider – an exact copy of the horse statue of the dictator Francisco Franco in Madrid. We eliminate him in a way that people now have to imagine: are you or the horse still carrying the weight from dictatorship on your shoulders, or can you imagine something different? You are free to imagine a different landscape and a different way of thinking. 

Q: Many of your works feature sculpture. Is sculpture your favorite medium?

FSC: I would say no. I would say I’m a painter, but sculpture is my social service. I hope in a future life I can dedicate myself to painting, which is an exercise of introspection. At the moment, I’m more extrospective. I try to make works together with the community and the viewer.

With painting, your decisions matter only to you. With sculpture, you must think of others – someone will have it in their pocket or in the street. Painting can be erased and no one cares unless it’s in a museum or by someone like Picasso.

I am still a teacher and a student. Sculpture is more about learning from people, provoking reactions, and creating new social behaviors, positive ones.

Learn more about Fernando Sánchez Castillo and his work at fernandosanchezcastillo.com.

About the Exhibition

Exhibit developer Melinda Barnadas shares why this work was included in the Race: Power, Resistance & Change exhibition:

A Proposal is a part of the Civil Rights Era Resistance Persists section of this exhibit because it invites reflection on monuments like the Statue of Liberty, dedicated in 1886, and the role they have played in shaping ideas about freedom and race in public history.

Sánchez Castillo’s artwork, with a new face on the Statue of Liberty, is his own interpretation that draws on stories of resistance to slavery and on oral accounts that have long been debated alongside official history in the United States. The work is included because the existence of the debate is historically documented and culturally significant, even if the claim itself is unresolved. 

To learn more about this debate, please visit this report by the National Park Service: The Black Statue of Liberty Rumor - An Inquiry into the History and Meaning of Bartholdi’s Liberté éclairant le Monde