“Grounded in the Stars” (2023) by Thomas J Price @ Times Square, New York City The Everlasting Ethnicity Problem
Exactly 3 years ago I met Thomas J Price at Art Basel Unlimited, see the attached pic. The artist had been since then enthusiastically promoted by the Swiss gallery Hauser & Wirth. As a result, Price’s sculpture “Grounded in the Stars”, executed in 2023 in the Kunstgiesserei St. Gallen, Switzerland, can be temporarily appreciated in New York’s Times Square from April 29 to June 17, 2025.
In 2023 the same sculpture had been already exhibited in Los Angeles at the Hauser & Wirth Gallery, however without any critical acclaim or public resonance.
Thomas J Price interview in front of his work “Moments contained” (2022), Gallery Hauser & Wirth @ ART BASEL Unlimited
アート・バーゼル、成功への宿命 (アーティストたちによって裸にされたアート・バーゼル、さえも*) 2022年度
ART BASEL – Doomed To Succeed (ART BASEL Stripped Bare by Her Artists, Even*) 2022 version
https://art-culture.world/articles/art-basel-2022/
As you can see, ethnicity is a crucial theme for the artist Thomas J Price. Can he create a Japanese woman as sculpture? Yes, of course. AI + a 3D printer would facilitate his project.
Personally I consider his sculpture a mediocre thing.
As a European, living in Japan, I really don’t need to create one more sculpture. I am fed up with these kind of boring, politically motivated or religion influenced sculptures. Enough is enough. The expensive bronze should be recycled, the other material thrown into the recycle container.
For ART+CULTURE let me archive this actual woke thing from New York, making the news around the global art scene with funny comments and reviews.
I attached the youtube video above, in which you can listen to Price’s ideas, concepts, intentions and the story behind his sculptures. His words can be exactly used again for “Grounded in the Stars”.
The problem for me: there is no laughing ambiguity or purposely purposeless context.
Price’s message is crystal clear: A serious, social commentary about “The Black Woman”.
Do Black People allow me to comment on Black Literature, Black Music, Black Architecture, Black Art?
Generally speaking, the answer is: No.
Why?
Because I’m not a Black Person.
But a part of my mother, my Italian relatives have North African roots.
It doesn’t matter for Black People: A is WHITE. A WHITE MAN. Amen. No more discussions.
Everlasting Fucking Ethnicity Problems, even in 2025.
Finger pointing towards young capitalist, wanna-have-fun-black-white-yellow-red-women on TikTok or IG enjoying their digitalised “fuck-you-authentic-self” in front of the not-so-social, but materialistic consumers.
All these creators are prisoners of the toxic beauty craze. Idiocracy in discussions. Augmented reality filters for self-deception and self-destruction of any gender and race or People of Color (except Yellow People?!).
Women’s universally intended freedom, the undermining of emancipation, human dignity, equality, subsidiarity and “be yourself” has been undermined by the same women with no education and/or a religious-political-extreme agenda.
Last but not least. I am really fed up with this pretentious_fuck_black_white_yellow_red_philosophy_about_humanity, boring thing.
Now, let’s read some funny comments, quotes from the art world regarding “Grounded in the Stars” by Price. You can google that stuff, in case you’d like to read the full texts.
Basel-Tokyo 6.6.2025
Mario A
Curator Bonami, our clown in the art world:
The Assyrians , the Egyptians, the Romans and even Michelangelo knew this up to the Asparagus monument in Santena. If you change the scale of a subject and enlarge it a lot, it becomes a monument and the viewer is intimidated and maybe venerates it or takes a nice selfie. If, in addition to being monumental, the subject is, as in the case of the bronze woman by the English sculptor Thomas J. Price, woke success should be guaranteed. Instead the controversy exploded from all sides. The young woman, perhaps out of artificial intelligence, black with tread locks, according to some has an aggressive attitude, a stereotype of the African American woman cleared by Michelle Obama who, however, brought it on the covers of Vogue and not in the midst of that digital cauldron that is Times Square. The artist is black, but being British he is accused of not understanding American black culture. A reverse colonialist, or differently colonialist you might call it…..
Wanna-be-critic Brian Boucher:
Quoting:
But they run the gamut, including bessieblount16’s terse “Trash” and Ms_izzie_bee’s “I h8yte your statue as it’s not an accurate representation of Black American Women. We come in all shapes and sizes and you have her plainly dressed looking angry. You’re British and know nothing of Black American Women. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“This is some leftist nonsense just to piss off white people,” contributes JayeF121212. “And based on the comments, blacks dont like it either.”
Explaining:
Other Black artists have also used Times Square as a place to comment on representation of Black people. Price’s midtown installation comes a few years after artist Kehinde Wiley, known for painting young men of color in settings and poses inspired by art historical portraiture, erected a sculpture, 29 feet high and also in bronze, of a Black man in everyday clothing—Nike sneakers and a sweatshirt—but astride a horse, riffing on monuments immortalizing Confederate leaders in the American South.
Wanna-be-critic Alex Greenberger:
Start:
On X, viral posts have labeled Thomas J. Price’s sculpture Grounded in the Stars (2023), a 12-foot-tall statue of a Black woman now on view in Times Square, a sign of a “very sick society” and a harbinger of the “death of civilization.”
Quoting Price:
Despite their grand scale, Price’s sculptures often feel understated. Part of this has to do with the vacant gaze of his sculptures, which are typically composite portraits of people Price has encountered. “They’re not looking to engage or for validation,” he once told Interview magazine. “They exist whether or not the viewer is there.” He connected his works to ancient Egyptian statues, whose cold yet regal appearance he sought to imitate.
Greenberger’s comment:
That’s almost certainly why Grounded in the Stars has made so many people—mainly conservatives—angry. It’s the kind of work that could be called a counter-monument, a riposte to the statues of people connected to colonization, enslavement, and systemic racism that can still be found in many corners of the world.
Wanna-be-TV-reporter Zinnia Maldonado
Quotes:
“It’s a plus-size woman, I’m a plus-size man. I’m African American, it’s an African American woman statue,” Woodson said. “So just seeing another piece for me to stop and have a moment with was very powerful to me.”
Trump’s Fox imbecility:
Watters filets ‘DEI statue’ in heart of NYC: ‘What is this celebrating?’