Jens Galschiøt unveiled a Trump statue inside the European Parliament building in Strasbourg on Tuesday 7 October. The 2.6m-tall work, titled The Orange Plague, shows Donald Trump nude and covered in 23-carat gold leaf.
The sculpture stands on a plinth with a caption beginning, “I am sitting on the back of a man.” Visitors to the three-day exhibition received a 3D-printed miniature to take home, and Galschiøt said he printed around 20,000 sculptures and distributed them to visitors and staff throughout the European Parliament.
Strasbourg and The Orange Plague
The sculpture places Donald Trump above a frail bronze figure, with tiny scales of justice in one hand and a golf club in the other. A golf-ball-sized globe sits at the feet of the smaller figure. The caption on the plinth continues, “He is sinking under my burden. I will do anything to help him. Except stepping down from my back.”
Per Clausen hosted the three-day exhibition at the European Parliament building in Strasbourg, giving the work a setting that turns the artwork into a direct intervention inside a political institution. Galschiøt said the design files were free for anyone who wants to print their own, widening the distribution beyond the building itself.
Jens Galschiøt and Donald Trump
Galschiøt linked the work to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes and said, “Normally I attack systems, but in this case, I will attack Trump personally,” before adding, “Now we put the gold on him,” and describing the result as “even more ridiculous than before”. He also said, “Trump is shining so much that nobody can see other people.”
The miniatures drew on a method used by the Democracy Movement in Hong Kong, which 3D-scanned The Pillar of Shame after that sculpture was seized and disassembled. Galschiøt’s answer was to turn a single installation into something visitors could carry out of the European Parliament, rather than leave behind on a pedestal.
Cop31 UN Climate Conference
The Orange Plague had already been shown at the CopP30 UN Climate Summit in Belém, Brazil last year and at the “hands off Greenland” demonstrations in Copenhagen earlier this year. Galschiøt plans to exhibit it again at the Cop31 UN Climate Conference next month in Antalya, Türkiye, extending the work’s route from Strasbourg to another UN climate venue.
For readers in Strasbourg, the immediate change is simple: the sculpture is now part of a three-day exhibition inside the European Parliament, with miniatures already circulating among visitors and staff. Whether The Orange Plague remains on display after that run is the point still hanging over the building.
