For much of the past year, Donald Trump proved uniquely untouchable, a political force of such mind-boggling invulnerability that he even bragged about attracting voters after hypothetically shooting someone on Fifth Avenue.
Hoping to strip away the Teflon Don’s legendary confidence to reveal the fleshy mortal beneath the expensive suits and long ties, members of the anarchist collective INDECLINE decided they would showcase the aspirant president in the most humiliating way they could imagine: without his clothes.
The group unveiled life-size statues of Trump in the nude Thursday morning in public spaces in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Seattle.
“The Emperor Has No B—s,” as the project is called, arrives several months after the group covered stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame with the names of African Americans who have been killed by police. In the past, the collective has also claimed responsibility for an anti-Trump “Rape” mural on the U.S.-Mexico border and a massive piece of graffiti art in California’s Mojave Desert.
[Why the names of African Americans killed by police took over the Hollywood Walk of Fame]
The group’s latest project has been four months in the making and was inspired, in part, by “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Hans Christian Andersen’s story about an overly confident leader without clothing, according to an INDECLINE spokesman.
Naked Donald Trump plop art sculpture in the Castro #SF pic.twitter.com/P3vr7xbVX0
— Larry-bob (@larrybobsf) August 18, 2016
Suggesting Trump is more of a (potential) ruler than a revolutionary, the statues also poke fun at the authoritarian tendency to erect large monuments in one’s likeness.
“Like it or not, Trump is a larger-than-life figure in world culture at the moment,” said the spokesman, who discussed the project with The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. “Looking back in history, that’s how those figures were memorialized and idolized in their time — with statues.”
Unlike monuments of most political figures in cities across the globe, the Trump statues are far from flattering. They’re oddly shaped, lack one key element of the male reproductive system and dramatically play down another.
The eyes scowl, the mouth pouts and the veiny, almost reptilian skin looks like it was torn off a human-size frog and dipped in bronzer.
The job of conceptualizing and creating the statues fell to a man who goes by the name “Ginger,” a Las Vegas-based artist. Ginger told The Post that he has a long history of designing monsters for haunted houses and horror movies.
In addition to doing makeup for a Busta Rhymes video, Ginger’s résumé includes another source of great pride for the artist: He’s a regular keynote speaker at haunted house conventions across the country. (We checked and, yeah, they’re a thing.)
