A towering statue portraying a naked, 23-karat-gold-coated Donald Trump being carried on the shoulders of a smaller, visibly burdened man has gone on display inside the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
Danish artist Jens Galschiot told HuffPost that his 8.5-foot-tall satirical sculpture titled “The Orange Plague,” depicts his “frustration with powerful leaders who put themselves above people and the planet, and use their power to decide for others.”
“It is a sculpture about power and powerlessness,” he said via email on Wednesday.
The piece is a development of Galschiot’s 2002 sculpture “Survival of the Fattest,” he said, which depicted an emaciated boy carrying a larger woman in a commentary on inequality of allocation of the world’s resources.
This time, Trump has taken the woman’s place.
Galschiot created his new version — alternatively titled “King of Injustice” — for the COP30 United Nations climate summit in Belém, Brazil, in 2025.
He said he drew inspiration from Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” the tale of a vain ruler tricked into parading naked while thinking he’s dressed in the finest clothes.
And even the club that Trump is clutching in the piece is loaded with symbolism, said Galschiot: “He is the privileged, thinking he can play (golf) the world (with is the shape of the ball).”
Per Clausen, a Danish member of the European Parliament from the leftist Red-Green Alliance, invited Galschiot to bring the provocative artwork into the heart of European politics.
“It brings an important discussion of how to deal with a guy who wants to influence and decide in the EU,” Galschiot said.
The reaction following its unveiling in Strasbourg this week, the artist said, was immediate: “A few seconds of silence, then applause, laughter and serious discussions.”
Trump has not publicly commented on the sculpture.
But Galschiot hopes the president eventually sees it.
“I hope he notices the exhausted man carrying him, rather than just admiring the gold,” he told HuffPost.
And if Trump were standing in front of the sculpture himself?
Galschiot said he’d tell the president: “Get off our backs.”
