Who gets to be seen?
It’s a question British sculptor Thomas J Price compels us to confront. His multidisciplinary practice challenges long-held ideas of identity, representation and value in public space. With Grounded in the Stars, a 12-foot-tall bronze sculpture presented by Times Square Arts, Price reimagines the monument in one of the most iconic — and scrutinized — public stages in the world.
Standing in the heart of Manhattan, N.Y., U.S.A., the work depicts a young Black woman with quiet confidence, rendered not as a symbol of myth or heroism but as herself. She wears a casual jacket and jeans. She looks like someone you might pass on the street. Yet here she is, monumental. Present. Unignorable.
The Everyday as Monument
Price’s art resists a tradition where monuments almost exclusively honor generals, kings and saints — figures deemed “worthy” by Eurocentric histories. Instead, he elevates the everyday. Ordinary people, often excluded from institutional memory, become the centerpiece.
We saw this powerfully in Matter of Time at Kunsthal Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where towering sculptures of Black men and women in puff jackets, cornrows and boots filled the gallery with presence. Just outside, at Rotterdam Central Station, Price’s sculpture Moments Contained sparked public debate — and even vandalism. To some, she didn’t “belong.” She wasn’t “representative.”
The backlash revealed what many multicultural, culturally fluid and third-culture individuals already know: visibility is political. For Black bodies, simply occupying space unapologetically can be revolutionary.
From Rotterdam to Times Square
In Rotterdam, resistance tested belonging. In Times Square, Price expanded the conversation to monumentality itself. Times Square Arts describes Grounded in the Stars as a reimagining of both the monument and who gets to be monumentalized.
Placed among towering billboards and flashing lights, the sculpture doesn’t compete with spectacle — it redefines it. The young woman’s stillness, her calm presence, is the counterpoint to a space designed for distraction. She is not advertising a product or performing a role. She simply exists. And in doing so, she commands the space.
Presence as Power
Price says: “I want people, in that moment of time, to be aware of their own observations.” His work operates as a mirror. How viewers see his figures — whether as threatening, inspiring, ordinary or extraordinary — reveals their assumptions about who belongs in spaces of power and visibility.
That mirror unsettles. It unsettled passersby in Rotterdam, and it unsettles in New York. Because Price’s figures don’t ask permission to be there. They don’t negotiate their belonging. They simply are.
For individuals whose lives span cultures — who translate themselves daily into systems never built for them — this unapologetic presence resonates deeply. It says: you don’t have to assimilate to be monumental. Your existence is enough.
A New Canon
With Grounded in the Stars, Thomas J Price offers more than a sculpture — he offers a new canon: One where the margins are the masterpiece. One where the historically erased are not anomalies but art itself.
In a city defined by its relentless pace and constant reinvention, Price plants stillness. He reminds us that monumentality isn’t about scale or grandeur — it’s about presence. About who we choose to see, and who we insist on remembering. And perhaps, as always, it was only a matter of time.
