In addition to Washington D.C., a variety of satirical statues have appeared in other cities in recent days with the intent of mocking former President Donald Trump.
It all began when, last week, a replica of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk appeared in the vicinity of the Capitol; above the desk stood a pile of poop with a plaque honoring the “brave men and women who broke into the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 to loot, urinate and defecate in those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election.”
Over the weekend, however, an imposing sculpture of a hand holding a tiki flashlight, reminiscent of those wielded by white supremacists during the deadly Unite the Right rally in 2017, was unexpectedly installed in a plaza near the White House. The accompanying plaque dedicates the artwork to “Trump and the ‘good people’ he bravely defended during the march in Charlottesville, Virginia.”
Meanwhile, two other satirical statues have appeared in Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon.
Both statues depict a life-sized model of a suit-clad Trump, positioned near an existing statue of a woman, and are titled “In Honor of a Lifetime of Sexual Assault”. They portray him with a tight-lipped smile and one hand curled in a gesture that could be seen as suggestive.
The plaques also reference the notorious 2005 Access Hollywood tape, where a hot mic recorded him telling then-host Billy Bush about kissing women and groping their genitalia without their consent in explicit terms.
“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” Trump stated in the clip, which emerged a month before the 2016 election. While it drew significant backlash, it ultimately did not prevent him from becoming President.
The Trump statue appeared on a sidewalk in Portland on Sunday, just an arm’s length from a nude sculpture that has been in place since 1975.
That sculpture, titled Kvinneakt (meaning “nude woman” in Norwegian), has its own rich history: it was featured in the “Expose Yourself to Art” poster in the 1970s, which depicted future Portland Mayor Bud Clark flashing the sculpture while wearing a raincoat.
Decades later, the towering figure of Trump looming over the woman, with their bases touching, created a strikingly similar scene. However, this display was short-lived.
By mid-afternoon, the Trump statue was decapitated and was dismantled piece by piece throughout the day, leaving behind just a single golden shoe.
The second Trump statue also had a brief existence.
It was installed in Philadelphia’s Maja Park on Wednesday, positioned about 15 feet behind and facing Maja, a nude statue of a woman with her eyes closed and arms raised, created by German artist Gerhard Marcks in the 1940s and installed in the park in 2021.
City workers removed the Trump statue and loaded it into a pickup truck before noon.
It’s unclear whether the same artist or artists created all four installations. However, the style of the bronze sculptures, along with the tone and font of their accompanying plaques, appear to be almost identical.
What is certain, without a doubt, is that freedom of expression and even satire have not been protected but rather dismantled, literally.
