At a busy thoroughfare inside the European Parliament, passing politicians are now confronted with a grotesque and gilded vision of American power: an 8.5-foot-tall statue of President Donald Trump, naked but for a thin layer of 23-karat gold leaf.
“Trump likes gold,” said Danish artist Jens Galschiøt, the statue’s creator, over the phone after it was unveiled Tuesday. “In a way, I think he would like this sculpture.”
Titled “The Orange Plague,” the artwork has been installed in Strasbourg, France, the official seat of the European Parliament. The copper sculpture, also dubbed the “King of Injustice,” imagines the US president on the shoulders of a frail smaller figure. His thighs and sagging belly wrap tightly around the man’s head; his hands clutch at a long golf club and the scales of justice.
“I am sitting on the back of a man,” reads the text on the statue’s plinth. “He is sinking under my burden. I will do anything to help him. Except step down from his back.”
Danish artist Jens Galschiøt with his 23-carat-gold-leaf-covered sculpture of Trump sitting on the back of a frail man.
Danish artist Jens Galschiøt with his 23-carat-gold-leaf-covered sculpture of Trump sitting on the back of a frail man. Courtesy Jens Galschiøt
For Galschiøt, the work symbolizes what he sees as the US president’s threats to the environment and the rules-based world order. “Trump is destroying all the things I believe in,” he said.
This is not necessarily a rebuke from the European Union, but rather from Danish politician Per Clausen, who sponsored the exhibit. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are entitled to host displays on parliament grounds, though all exhibitions must be approved by officials. Parliamentary rules prohibit events or exhibitions deemed “offensive or of an inflammatory nature or contradictory to the values on which the Union is founded,” or those that “undermine the dignity of Parliament.”
