A 2.6-metre gold-leaf statue of a naked Donald Trump went on display inside the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday and was removed the next day. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico demanded its removal on Thursday, calling it a sign of the EU’s decline, even though it was already gone. The statue is already moving on, with the artist planning to take it to the COP31 climate conference next month.
Monuments Once Flattered the Powerful
For centuries, political sculpture existed to make power look permanent, with kings in bronze on horseback and generals gazing across city squares. Greek and Roman rulers appeared nude or semi-nude to borrow the aura of gods and heroes, and Renaissance and Neoclassical artists later revived the idea. The message was always the same: remember this person as larger than life.
Danish artist Jens Galschiøt turns that visual language against its subject. He told CNN that the 2.6-metre figure shows Trump naked, covered in 23-carat gold leaf and sitting on a frail man’s back, adding simply: “Trump likes gold”. A plaque has the figure say he would do anything for the man beneath him except step down from his back. Galschiøt also says he drew on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes.
Parliament Hosted It, Not Endorsed It
Danish MEP Per Clausen, of the Red-Green Alliance and the Left group, sponsored the exhibition to spark debate about Trump’s influence in Europe. A Parliament spokesperson told CNN that the quaestors, a cross-party administrative body, approved it under a rule letting each MEP sponsor two exhibitions per term. That approval is not an endorsement of the message.
Fico urged Parliament President Roberta Metsola to remove it, and Fidesz MEP Ernő Schaller-Baross called it hypocrisy, saying Brussels would condemn a naked statue of Ursula von der Leyen. Clausen answered that nobody should accept “living in fear and self-censorship”. A parliament should make room for expression that offends foreign governments, but visitors cannot easily tell a sponsored exhibit from an official one.
Satire Now Travels Like a Meme
Snopes reported that the statue was shown at the COP30 climate conference in Brazil before Strasbourg.
Galschiøt also handed out 10,000 miniature versions to visitors in Strasbourg, according to his own social media posts cited by The Hill. A statue that can be photographed, copied and moved from summit to summit behaves less like a monument than a meme.
A wooden Trump statue in Slovenia was burned to the ground in 2020, which shows how fast satire of living leaders can disappear. Old monuments tried to tell future generations whom to remember, while satirical sculptures like this one tell the present whom to ridicule. That makes the work closer to an editorial cartoon than a civic monument, and being shared counts for more than lasting. The material may still be gold, bronze or stone, but the pedestal has changed sides.
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