An Artist’s Creepy Effigy of Donald Trump Has Upset Some Villagers in a Tiny Slovenian Town

Move over Lady Liberty and
enter… Pez Trump? A local artist has built a disturbing effigy in
the likeness of US president Donald Trump to haunt the hillside of
a sleepy village in Slovenia. The figure has a fierce look in his
eyes and his right arm raised in the air, mimicking the pose of the
Statue of Liberty. 

Tomaz Schlegl, the
artist behind the wooden statue, which is due to be burned on
Halloween, told artnet News that the figure is “not
Donald Trump,” though the
25-foot-tall structure of a besuited and square-headed man looks an
awful lot like Trump. It has a pink face, puffy lips, and blond
hair, from which wooden stakes emerge. 

“This is the Statue of Liberty,” Schlegl said. “If people
interpret it to be about Trump, if they see him in it, that’s up to
them. Trump is the personification of total liberty because he has
shown that he can do and say whatever he wants and he won’t be held
accountable. He can still be president. But I leave all that
interpretation to the public.”

While the pose is indeed
reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty in New York, instead of an
enlightening torch in the right hand, the not-Trump sculpture is
provocatively raising a clenched fist. “For the first time since World War II,
populism is prevailing: look at [British Prime Minister Boris] Johnson, look at Trump, or [Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor] Orban,” Schlegl told AFP. “Where
is this world heading?”

There is a mechanism installed in the statue’s head that
allows its facial expression to change from “very friendly” during
the week to “really scary” at the weekend, signifying the two faces
of hypocritical populist politicians.

The statue is located on private
property, in the tiny settlement of Sela pri Kamniku, about 20
miles northeast of the capital city of Ljubljana. Its official
inauguration is tomorrow, but it has already sparked some
controversy among the fewer than 150 local residents. While some
locals leant a hand in putting the sculpture together, others are
angered by what they regard as an eyesore. One disgruntled villager has already tried to
mow the sculpture down in his tractor.

“Our more traditional neighbors,
country folk, claim it’s ugly and say it does not fit in this
beautiful landscape,” Schlegl said. The owner of the land says, who gave the artist
permission to leave the work in place for two months, that he was
unaware of what exactly the artist had planned for the
plot.

This is not the first
Trump-related statue to appear in Slovenia in recent months.
Schlegl says he made his sculpture as a response to one of Melania Trump that
appeared in her hometown of Sevnica in May. The wooden folk art
piece was commissioned by conceptual artist Brad Downey from a
local sculptor, Alex Zupevc, and depicts the First Lady waving
blithely on inauguration day. Schlegl’s more frightening sculpture, on the
other hand, has adopted the clenched fist with which Trump closed
out his inauguration speech.

The post An Artist’s Creepy Effigy of Donald Trump Has Upset
Some Villagers in a Tiny Slovenian Town appeared first on
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