Unbound (2019) 

The rich symbolism displayed in Unbound (2019) is as inescapable as the meaning behind the title. The artist focuses on a pair of roughly chiseled, oversized concrete hands, shown to be pulling apart from each other, forcefully breaking a purposefully weathered stainless steel chain in the process.

Since Antiquity the image of the closed fist has become a universal symbol of defiance and a call for revolution. From Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People to the more recent reaction of Donald Trump to an assassination attempt, the power behind a closed fist is irrefutable. The sight of a pair of hands forcefully breaking the chains which tied the hands together recalls indeed a long tradition of closed fists which had been portrayed in diverse mediums, albeit mostly as a response to precise political contexts.

Thanks to his brutalist approach to sculpting, Breaking Free from the Ties that Bind Us inevitably recalls the propagandist public art of the 1930s and the Art Deco style which dominated the period. Just like Rodin’s hand studies, Naomi Blake’s bound wrists or Louise Bourgeois’s numerous variations on the theme, Nicholls imbues his sculpture with multi-layered iconography.