On a busy thoroughfare of the European Parliament, passing politicians are now confronted with a grotesque, gilded vision of American power: an 8.5-foot-tall statue of President Donald Trump, naked but covered in a thin layer of 23-karat gold leaf.
“Trump likes gold,” Danish artist Jens Galschiøt, creator of the statue, said by telephone after its inauguration on Tuesday. “In a way, I think he would like this sculpture.”
Titled “The Orange Plague,” the artwork was installed in Strasbourg, France, the official seat of the European Parliament. The copper sculpture, also nicknamed the “King of Injustice”, depicts the American president on the shoulders of a smaller, more frail figure. Her thighs and sagging belly wrap tightly around the man’s head; his hands grip a long golf club and the scales of justice.
“I am sitting on the back of a man”, we can read on the base of the statue. “He’s sinking under my burden. I’ll do anything to help him. Except get off his back.”
For Galschiøt, this work symbolizes what he sees as the US president’s threats to the environment and the rules-based global order. “Trump is destroying everything 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 exhibition. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have the right to organize exhibitions within Parliament grounds, although all exhibitions must be approved by civil servants. Parliamentary rules prohibit events or exhibitions deemed “offensive or of an inflammatory nature or contrary to the values on which the Union is founded”, or those which “undermine the dignity of Parliament”.
Authorization does not amount to explicit approval of their content. However, Galschiøt, who feared the request would be rejected, sees the green light as a form of tacit approval from European parliamentarians. “I think a lot of Americans say, ‘OK, he’s our president, but he’s also ridiculous in some ways.’ And I think most Europeans see it like that too,” he said.
Galschiøt is known for his provocative political artwork, including the “Pillar of Shame”, a memorial to the 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 alluded to Hans Christian Andersen’s story “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, in which a vain emperor roams the city naked. “Dictators don’t like to be made fun of,” he explained.
The most recent temporary exhibition is expected to remain on view until Thursday. It is accompanied by more than 1,000 3D-printed miniatures of the sculpture, which are made available to passers-by as “protest tokens.”
Clausen, the exhibition’s sponsor, is a member of the Socialist Red-Green Alliance of Denmark. Elected MEP in 2024, he is a member of La Gauche, a left-wing minority group representing around 6% of seats in the European Parliament.
“I think we need to have a discussion about power in the world and how that power is used,” he said by telephone from Strasbourg. “The way Trump is acting is a very, very big problem for European citizens. I want to start the debate in Europe about how we can defend ourselves against Trump and how we can do politics that does not depend on him.”
Aside from “a few people on the far right,” Clausen said the reaction to the statue has been positive. “It’s very important that we in Parliament have this opportunity to show things that not everyone agrees with.”
Galschiøt has exhibited “The Orange Plague” in public several times before, including at the Munich Security Conference and the UN COP30 climate conference last November in Brazil. He also plans to exhibit it at COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, next month.
Trump has yet to comment on the artwork.
A spokesperson for the European Parliament’s press service said by email that the exhibition had been approved by Parliament’s quaestors, a cross-party group of MEPs responsible for administrative matters. “Each MEP has the right to sponsor two cultural events or exhibitions per legislature in dedicated spaces,” adds the press release, specifying that the quaestors “appreciate respect for the rules in force”.
In 2024, Galschiøt exhibited a model of his “Pillar of Shame” in front of the European Parliament building in Brussels as part of a “forbidden art” exhibition. Then sponsored by another Danish MEP, Kira Marie Peter-Hansenm, the exhibition targeted Hong Kong and mainland China, where references to the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 are heavily censored.
The artist drew parallels between his most famous work and his latest jab against Trump. “It’s about the powerful and the powerless, and in a way, the ‘Pillar of Shame’ is that too.”
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