Mayor of London logo London Assembly logo
Home
Computer-generated image with a traditional building in the background and a large, bronze colour sea shell, with a low ramp going into the centre, with a figure walking up the ramp. image with a traditional building in the background and a large, bronze colour sea shell, with a low ramp going into the centre, with a figure walking up the ramp.

The Wake

London's new memorial will be an immersive sculpture to gather, listen, reflect and remember the victims of transatlantic slavery.

Set to be unveiled in 2027, the new memorial will be the first of its scale and profile in the UK. It will be located outside London Museum Docklands.

The Wake by Khaleb Brooks represents the perseverance, prosperity and beauty rooted in African and African diasporic heritage.

The artwork will feature a nearly seven-metre-high bronze cowrie shell, which you will be able to enter, providing a space for reflection.

Computer-generated image with a traditional building in the background and a large, bronze colour sea shell, with a low ramp going into the centre, with a figure walking up the ramp. image with a traditional building in the background and a large, bronze colour sea shell, with a low ramp going into the centre, with a figure walking up the ramp.

The Wake visualisation for West India Quay

Watch the artist talk about the idea

Playing this video will set cookies from YouTube/Google

Meet the artist, Khaleb Brooks

Playing this video will set cookies from YouTube/Google

What will The Wake feel like?

Playing this video will set cookies from YouTube/Google

What inspired The Wake?

About The Wake

Shaped like a cowrie shell, The Wake will be an immersive sculpture to pause within.

There will be two accessible entrances marked by bronze sugar loaf mould sculptures. These represent the sugar industry and its dependence on slave labour.

Newly commissioned poems by Yrsa Daley-Ward will be engraved on the inside.

The wall will also list the names of the enslaved, with blank spaces to acknowledge those we could not identify.

Cowrie shells hold cultural and spiritual significance. The shells were used as currency across Africa, before being adopted by European traders as currency.

They quickly became an exchange for enslaved individuals. Influential abolitionist and formerly enslaved author, Oluadah Equiano, describes being sold for 172 Cowrie shells in his memoir. The cowrie shell became a stark symbol of slavery and exploitation of human life.

The Wake acknowledges that dark past but also reclaims the cowrie shell as a symbol of resilience, creating a space for contemplation.

The intention behind this work is not just to remember individual stories and hopes, but also counteract the history of forgetting embedded in colonialism.
Khaleb Brooks, artist and creator of The Wake
A picture of inside The Wake, a bronze-coloured art piece by Khaleb Brooks. It shows bronze rods hanging from the ceiling, with a crowd gathered below
A picture of a wall inside The Wake, a bronze-coloured art piece by Khaleb Brooks. It shows bronze rods hanging from the ceiling, with a crowd gathered below
A picture of slave faces on a wall within The Wake, a bronze-coloured art piece by Khaleb Brooks. It shows bronze rods hanging from the ceiling, with a crowd gathered below

Locations

The Wake will sit outside the London Museum Docklands in West India Quay.

London Docklands history is closely linked with transatlantic slavery. Warehouses in West India Quay were built to receive the products of slavery, and are some of the only surviving buildings of their kind in the capital.

Further artworks will be installed at other locations in the city and beyond. Sites of Memory locations have connections to the trade of enslaved people, recognising that the legacy of transatlantic slavery is still present the capital.

Playing this video will set cookies from YouTube/Google

Watch: Why the artist likes this location

Meet the artist: Khaleb Brooks

A picture of the artist Khaleb Brooks. He is wearing a brightly-coloured jacket, and sitting with his hands clasped over his right knee. He is mixed-race and has a single earring in his right ear.

Khaleb Brooks
Portrait by Ciaran Frame

Khaleb Brooks uses archives, collective memory and personal experience to create art that offers new perspectives on history and healing. In 2023, he performed at Onassis AiR in Athens, completed a research Fellowship in Brazil, and participated in two Los Angeles-based residencies.

In 2021 and 2022, Brooks completed a year-long research residency at Liverpool's International Slavery Museum, which led to solo exhibition Jupiter’s Song. This immersive installation included sculpture, video and tapestries, offering a “homegoing” to unnamed souls that lost their lives in the transatlantic slave trade's Middle Passage. 

In 2019, Brooks was a Tate Modern artist in residence, featuring (and performing) at the Venice Biennale, as part of Shu Lea Chaeng’s 3x3x6 at the Taiwan Pavilion.

Selected exhibitions and performances include: 

  • Jupiter's Song, International Slavery Museum, Liverpool 2022  

  • Can I Get A Witness, Gazelli Art House, London, 2022 

  • Decriminalised Futures, Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 2022  

  • Celebrating Stonewall 50 years (Commission), Schwules Museum, Berlin 2019  

  • Rememory: Ritual Blackness and Beyond, WE-DEY, Vienna, Austria 2018 

  • Khaleb Brooks: Art is Revolution- Gentrification, Paper Box, Brooklyn 2014

See more on London's memorial to victims of transatlantic slavery

Why London needs this memorial

Find out why London’s getting a new memorial and how we're developing it with key partners and communities.

A picture of slave faces on a wall within The Wake, a bronze-coloured art piece by Khaleb Brooks. It shows bronze rods hanging from the ceiling, with a crowd gathered below

Sites of Memory

Discover the partner memorials that will connect the global history and stories of slavery across London and the world.

London Docklands public square photograph with a faded, grainy purple filter overlaid. A central yellow circle spotlights the location for a new memorial artwork.

Need a document on this page in an accessible format?

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of a PDF or other document on this page in a more accessible format, please get in touch via our online form and tell us which format you need.

It will also help us if you tell us which assistive technology you use. We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 5 working days.