At a busy thoroughfare inside the European Parliament, passing politicians are now confronted with a grotesque and gilded vision of American power: an 8.5-foot-tall (2.6-metre-tall) statue of U.S. President Donald Trump, naked but for a thin layer of 23-karat gold leaf. “Trump likes gold,” said Danish artist Jens Galschiøt, the statue’s creator, over the phone after it was unveiled Tuesday. “In a way, I think he would like this sculpture.” Titled “The Orange Plague,” the artwork has been installed in Strasbourg, France, the official seat of the European Parliament. The copper sculpture, also dubbed the “King of Injustice,” imagines the U.S. president on the shoulders of a frail smaller figure. His thighs and sagging belly wrap tightly around the man’s head; his hands clutch at a long golf club and the scales of justice. “I am sitting on the back of a man,” reads the text on the statue’s plinth. “He is sinking under my burden. I will do anything to help him. Except step down from his back.” For Galschiøt, the work symbolizes what he sees as the U.S. president’s threats to the environment and the rules-based world order. “Trump is destroying all the things I believe in,” he said. This is not necessarily a rebuke from the European Union, but rather from Danish politician Per Clausen, who sponsored the exhibit. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are entitled to host displays on parliament grounds, though all exhibitions must be approved by officials. Parliamentary rules prohibit events or exhibitions deemed “offensive or of an inflammatory nature or contradictory to the values on which the Union is founded,” or those that “undermine the dignity of Parliament.” Permission is not tantamount to explicit endorsement of their contents. Nonetheless Galschiøt, who had feared the application would be rejected, considers the green-light to be a form of tacit approval from Europe’s parliamentarians. “I think a lot of American people say, ‘OK, this is our president, but he’s also ridiculous in a way.’ And I think most Europeans see him like that, too,” he said. Galschiøt is known for provocative political artworks including the “Pillar of Shame,” a memorial to victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre that was controversially removed from a Hong Kong university in 2021. He said his decision to depict Trump naked alludes to Hans Christian Andersen’s story “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” in which a vain emperor parades the city in the nude. “Dictators don’t like you laughing at them,” he explained. The most recent temporary display is expected to remain on show until Thursday. It is accompanied by over 1,000 3D-printed miniatures of the sculpture, which are being made available to passersby as “protest tokens.” Clausen, the exhibition’s sponsor, is a member of Denmark’s socialist Red-Green Alliance party. Elected as an MEP in 2024, he is a member of The Left, a minority left-wing group representing around 6 per cent of seats in the European Parliament. “I think we need to have a discussion about power in the world and how this power is used,” he said on the phone from Strasbourg. “The way Trump acts is a very, very big problem for people in Europe. I want to raise the discussion in Europe about how we can make our self-defense against Trump, and how can we make politics that is not dependent on him.” Aside from “some people from the extreme right wing,” Clausen said the response to the statue has been positive. “It’s very important that we in parliament have this opportunity to show things that not everybody agrees with.” Galschiøt has exhibited “The Orange Plague” in public several times before, including at the Munich Security Conference and last November’s COP30 UN climate conference in Brazil. He also plans to display it at COP31 in Antalya, Turkey next month. Trump is yet to comment on the artwork. A spokesperson for the European Parliament’s press service said via email that the exhibit was approved by the parliament’s quaestors, a cross-party group of MEP’s responsible for administrative matters. “Each MEP is entitled to sponsor two cultural events or exhibitions per parliamentary term in dedicated areas,” the statement added, adding that quaestors “assess the compliance with the rules in place.” In 2024, Galschiøt exhibited a model of his “Pillar of Shame” in front of the European Parliament building in Brussels as part of an exhibition of “forbidden art.” Then sponsored by another Danish MEP, Kira Marie Peter-Hansenm, the display took aim at Hong Kong and mainland China, where references to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre are heavily censored. The artist drew parallels between his most famous work and his latest swipe at Trump. “This is about the powerful and the powerless, and in a way, the ‘Pillar of Shame’ is also that.” By Oscar Holland, CNN
