She has no name. No plaque. No backstory carved in stone. And yet, she rises. Twelve feet tall, calm and composed, right in the heart of New York City located in Times Square. A Black woman cast in bronze, not performing, not protesting, just present. Her stillness feels louder than the flashing lights around her. Her quiet becomes the disruption in a place built on noise and motion.
Art often asks, “What does this mean?” But this piece asks something else: “Who is she? Why does she feel so familiar, so necessary, in this space?”
In the documentary What Happened, Miss Simone?, Qubilah Shabazz asks, “How does royalty stomp around in the mud and still walk with grace?” Grounded in the Stars feels like an answer. She stands, rooted. Regal without needing a crown. Graceful not in spite of the mud, but because of it.
And where she stands matters. New York City’s Times Square may be bright, but the histories she carries are heavy. She stands in the truth of who she is. She carries it all: the memories and the weight of being a Black woman in America. Being seen but unheard, expected to be strong, to be soft, to be everything, yet still invisible.
It is not just about the past. It is about the everyday. The holding. The swallowing. The rising anyway. She is stillness with intention.
The Artist Behind Grounded in the Stars
Thomas J. Price, a British sculptor, is one of those artists whose work commands attention. In his latest piece in Times Square, Grounded in the Stars, there is a striking lifelike accuracy, not just in how she looks but in how she feels. Through choices like posture, expression, and clothing, he invites us to think about how society assigns value to people based on appearance, race, and class.
Price uses the sculpture to explore what it means to truly see someone. He reclaims this space, turning a fictional Black woman into something far beyond just a sculpture. She is a symbol of presence, power, and possibility.
A Monument Made Familiar
She’s not abstract or trapped in an art-world mystery. She’s a regular-degular Black girl in sneakers, braids, and a T-shirt, standing tall in the middle of Times Square. The bronze isn’t polished to perfection. It’s textured just enough to feel familiar. Like skin. Like fabric. Like her.
Her pose is soft, a shifting contrapposto. One hip tilted, her weight settling onto a single leg, the other at ease. It’s a posture that breathes. Ancient sculptors used it to make stone feel alive, to let bodies speak, even in stillness. Here, it speaks of confidence, ease, and presence.
This is the same pose Michelangelo gave David. White marble, mythic masculinity, carved to dominate, but Thomas J. Price gives us something else. A woman made monumental by her ordinariness. She’s not here to imitate history. She’s here to reframe it.
In her body, contrapposto becomes something else entirely. Not a reference, but a reclaiming. No crown. No sword. Just stillness. The kind that hums with quiet power, like something’s about to happen, but only on her terms. Grounded in the Stars honors the kind of Black woman we pass every day but rarely see immortalized. There’s grace in her stillness, power in her quiet. Rooted in the real, reaching toward something bigger. She feels like all of us, and more.
Public Response
That reframing doesn’t stop with the sculpture itself, it extends to how we react to her. Reactions to Grounded in the Stars have been layered. For many, it’s a breath of fresh air. A Black woman, unbothered, finally taking up space. People stopped, took photos, took it in. For Black women especially, it felt like being seen. But not everyone welcomed her.
Some questioned her clothes, others her body. It was too casual, too big, too ordinary. Not what a sculpture is “supposed” to look like. We could frame these critiques as complex cultural puzzles, something to ponder in theory. But the truth is simpler: Fatphobia exists. Racism exists. Sexism exists.
The discomfort says more than the critique ever could. This was never really about the statue. It’s about who we’ve been taught deserves to be seen, cast in bronze, made permanent, and who doesn’t. It’s the same pressure Beyoncé names in Ameriican Requiem, the expectation to fit a mold that was never made for you. Grounded in the Stars is challenging who gets to be seen, how beauty and power are defined, and what deserves to be monument-ized.
The Power of Presence
There’s something quietly defiant about just standing still. No flash. No spectacle. Just presence. Grounded in the Stars is the answer to erasure, a soft yes in a world full of no.
A body that says: “I am here. You will see me. Not because I perform. Not because I suffer. Because I breathe.” This is what existential defiance looks like: a Black woman, cast in bronze, unmoving but full of motion, grounded but reaching. Existing, without apologizing.
Even when the world doesn’t make room for you. Even when your name is lost and your story unwritten. Even when the mud clings and no one sees the weight. Stand anyway.
Grounded in the Stars will be at Times Square until June 17, 2025.
