Last Thursday, an unusual statue appeared on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. — a bronze-colored swirl of poop on top of a replica of Nancy Pelosi’s desk. “This memorial honors the brave men and women who broke into the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 to loot, urinate and defecate throughout those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election,” read the plaque on the statue’s base.
Then on Sunday in Portland, Oregon, a temporary statue of Donald Trump popped up in front of a permanent statue of an abstract female nude, its placement suggesting the former president was ogling the woman. A plaque at its base read “In honor of a lifetime of sexual assault” followed by Trump’s infamous Access Hollywood quote that was made public in the final days of the 2016 election. (By Wednesday, a similar statue was placed behind a female nude in Philadelphia.) And on Monday, a statue of a tiki torch evoking the white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville was installed in Freedom Plaza blocks from the White House with a plaque describing it as the “Donald J. Trump Enduring Flame.”
With no one coming forward to claim credit for the statues, I reached out to a woman — who, coincidentally, was a producer on one of the Borat sequels — who applied for a permit for the poop-desk statue on the National Mall. Hours later, I received a call from an artist who said the Borat producer was not involved, but that she applied for the permit for him as a cutout. Declining to give his name, he took credit for the statues in Philadelphia and Portland and did not say if he was behind the D.C. statues — though the permit process and the similarity of the plaques suggest the same author. I spoke with the guerilla artist about their mission and whether or not we can expect more statues before Election Day.
When did you come up with this idea and why did you start making the statues?
Have you heard this phrase “resistance fatigue”? We’ve been through nine years of a Trump presidency and the aftermath and now a campaign again. It’s exhausting and we’ve grown kind of numb to it. I thought that resistance fatigue is interesting and very true for a large part of the world right now. To me, a lot of the most shocking things about Trump as a candidate and as a human being are things that have become kind of forgotten or numbed or normalized, and that’s very scary. So this is a way to try to bring some of those very shocking, very real, very important things into a national conversation in a fun, cheeky way.
Did you know from the beginning you wanted to use Trump’s Access Hollywood quote, or was this revived for the two new groping allegations that have emerged in the past week?
We knew we wanted it to be in reference to the Access Hollywood tape. I think the thing that really appealed with that one was the juxtaposition of putting it next to female statues that were nude. Obviously, we didn’t want to put it next to real people because it felt a little icky, I guess, to put it next to a Harriet Tubman statue or something. But the headline — “in honor of a lifetime of sexual assault” — that came very late in the process.
How long have you been in the process of creating and installing these statues?
It’s been more than one month, but less than three months.
How did you choose the placement of the statues in Portland and Philadelphia, beyond just their proximity to a nude figure?
It was a combination of nude statutes that are accessible where they might look right and places we thought they might last a little bit longer. Which I would say we were incorrect. [Note: The statue in Portland was beheaded hours after its installation. City workers have removed the statue in Philadelphia.]
Was there a specific picture of Trump that these statues were modeled off? What are they made of?
No.
The pedestals are actually just painted wood. Trump’s head is clay, initially molded, then turned into a plastic. We wanted it to be a very condescending smirk on the face and then a kind of lewd grabbing motion with the hand. The face was the hardest part to get right. The torso is kind of weird. Those are actual clothes that have been sort of solidified. They are around eight feet tall and weigh about 100 pounds.
Can we expect more to pop up before the election on Tuesday?
Anything can happen.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
