About

Martin Luther King "The Embrace" Statue is an abstract sculpture and bronze statue of arms wrapped around themselves made in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King. The statue is intended to depict the couple embracing based on a famous photo of the two. However, after it was unveiled in Boston in January 2023 leading up to MLK Day, it became the subject of mockery, criticism and memes online, as many commented that it resembled sexual body parts and sexual acts.

Origin

On January 13th, 2023, Embrace Boston unveiled "The Embrace," a sculpture designed by Black sculptor Hank Willis Thomas^[1] (shown below, left). The piece is inspired by a photograph of Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King embracing after MLK won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 (shown below, right).

Criticism of the statue started soon after it was revealed. Seneca Scott, a cousin of Coretta Scott King, called it a "masturbatory metal homage" and told CNN,^[2] "If you can look at it from all angles, and it’s probably two people hugging each other, it’s four hands. It’s not the missing heads that’s the atrocity that other people clamp onto that; it’s a stump that looked like a penis. That’s a joke."

Spread

On social media as images of the piece spread in mid-January 2023, many commenters opined that the statue looked like various obscenities from different angles. For example, on January 14th, 2023, Twitter user @hradzka^[3] tweeted, "the artist somehow managed to make look like, from alternate angles a) a dude eating pussy b) hands struggling to hoist an ENORMOUS dong," receiving nearly 800 likes in three days (shown below, left). On January 16th, Twitter user @DragonflyJonez^[4] compared the statue to cunnilingus, gaining over 320 retweets and 2,500 likes in 24 hours (shown below, right).

On January 15th, 2023, Twitter user @therapistforus^[5] noted that the statue makes sense when viewed from a specific angle, gaining over 1,600 retweets and 10,000 likes in two days (shown below, left). On January 17th, Twitter user @Everette^[6] defended the artist in the discourse around the statue, writing, "No matter what your opinion may be… tearing down another black man who's genuinely a great artist and good human is gross," gaining 45 likes in two hours (shown below, right).

Various Examples

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