The sculpture, titled The Orange Plague, was unveiled on Tuesday by Danish artist Jens Galschiøt at the Parliament in Strasbourg. The 8-foot-tall work depicts a naked Trump, covered in gold leaf, perched on the shoulders of a frail man, holding a golf club and scales of justice. A plaque reads: “I am sitting on a man’s back. He collapses under my burden.”
POLITICO was present at the unveiling, where visitors clamored for miniature replicas of the sculpture, distributed in several colors. The statue occupies a prominent location at the entrance to Parliament’s Winston Churchill building, before the corridor connecting the offices of MEPs and Commission officials to the plenary hall.
Galschiøt said the work aimed to confront Trump’s policies and start a debate about how the US president was “destroying the world’s only chance to counter climate catastrophe”.
Left-wing Danish MEP Per Clausen, who invited the artist, defended the installation in a statement. “If someone is so thin-skinned that they can’t tolerate this sculpture… then they have no place on the world stage,” he said.
Fico cultivated ties with Trump, meeting with him at Mar-a-Lago in January to discuss closer cooperation, particularly in the area of civilian nuclear energy. He hailed the MAGA movement as “a vision that urgently resonates not only in the United States but around the world.”
The sculpture has already been exhibited at protests in Copenhagen and at the COP30 summit in Brazil. It is expected to be presented at next month’s COP31 conference in Antalya, Turkey.
Trump has not commented on the installation.
Gerardo Fortuna contributed to this report.
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