Trumposhka (2019)

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Title: Trumposhka
Year: 2019
Medium: Acrylic, Ink, nail polish, paper, spray paint, pencil, newspaper, glitter and mini circular mirrors
Measurements: 91cm x 91cm

This time the attestant and art lover is confronted by my second portrait of a dignitary in IBK’s political series of heads of state who in their position have acted in Machiavellic self-interest, corrupted the people with hatred and fear, and made problems into solutions to bloat their own ego and personal legacy.

A great pity and feat is that I started to paint and compose this piece almost a year and a half ago around the same time as my first political study but due to the anxiety of constantly doubting my path and worth I am only releasing it now. In addition, to my surprise my sceptic maybe sometimes considered an inflammatory and facetious prognosis of current affairs are coming to life as a Nostradamus cosmic joke and identical buzzwords are being employed by debates shows, news channels and comedians around the globe.

In the very beginning, I found myself painting ’Trumposhka’ while belting out at the top of my lungs ‘He's got the whole world in his hands’ sung by serial killer Gerald Greene, played by Steve Buscemi in a memorable scene of 'Con Air' (1997) where he joins a little girl and her dolls for a tea party. The last three years as an impartial viewer with no strings attached to the States’ politics have seemed like that very same sidebar, with no real direction but fleeing insanity. Chimerical and tangible, I see the egg headed president and central figure as a somewhat duplicitous sociopath and a child, both scared of one and other, and all conflicted within the same person. This can be perceived in his multiple addresses to the public, schizophrenic and split storytelling, often statement retractions, poor choice of vocabulary, mannerisms and labels.

The self-named Mr. Brexit is hence presented tangled in a web of his own lies, from which he cuts ties with everyday depending on what direction the fibbing clouds blow within a levitating sea of puppeteers. A stirred sky beating down on diplomacy with their eyes wide shut trying to manipulate, plot, profit and collude, crumbling to prejudice and lunacy, paralysed in fear and culpability to the main figure’s grand delusions, which brought his own country to their knees with government shutdowns, forgetting promises, as well as retracting copious defamations, morals and duty.

The protagonist and the other popular characters embody this general egg headed attitude through humpty dumpty-like attributes as well as also resembling Russian dolls commonly known as matryoshkas. The title therefore reads into exposing each layer of his public persona he cultivated along the years with a narcissistic need for attention from the media, Twitter and gossip columns, as he struggles to take control of a country and administration whom envision people as products, Lego™ golden blocks instead quality and affordable housing, exacerbate homelessness, dollar signs in lieu of health care, brainwashing in replacement of education, and rejects instead of alternatives.

'Trumposhka' henceforth presents an iconic blanched office standing on a pile of cyanide berries and poison hemlock flowers which is being tainted inside and out, brick by brick, by a pseudo-imperialist Muscovite Baroque style.

Two leading and framing towers, resembling the lateral spires of the State Historical Museum in Moscow’s Red Square, wall in his pipe dream of restoring a country back to greatness. An isolated empire with dreamy Moorish architectural features and Daliesque external walls studded with golden bread rolls, all topped off with golden figurines reminiscent of Tinseltown trophies and eggs lined along the roof’s parapet akin to the Dalí Theatre and Museum in Figueres, Catalunya, Spain.

This pictorial analogy finds truth in the small details as a territory which is still frequently publicised as the land of opportunity annually increases border patrols and militant immigration control who mishandle and abuse their authority.

The studded auric buns encrusted in a lavish quilted blockade represent how people see this country, a land of comfort and dreams broadcasted through films, silver screen and pop culture, which our main protagonist also yearns and clings to with reality tv shows to flaunt his wealth and stay relevant in his minor celebrity status.

The Eastern Orthodoxy towers erected on the central building’s roof and entrance generally known as “poppy heads” are accompanied by golden emblems of the crescent moon, which was one of the state symbols of Byzantium and can be found on Old Russian icons, illustrations and literature referring to the astral object as an anchor. Although the courts ruled the vast amount of evidence inconclusive, this intentional study of Soviet architecture puts focus on the extent of Neopalpa’s questionable collusion (Neopalpa is the moth the named after him), benefit and reciprocity he shared in his multiple stays, holdings and connections across the Pacific.

Thus the painting also adopts another Baroque quality to match the oval monarch’s opulent personal taste, anchor, capitalist mentality and fear of having nothing stemmed from his obsessive compulsion with money, power and his family name, the horror vacui. Horror vacui is a Latin term mostly used in art referring to the fear of empty spaces which was assimilated by the Baroque period as another extravagant measure to adorn art and architecture with frills, leaving no space untouched, to live the most excessive lifestyle possible before the macabre and inevitable end.

I borrowed Dalí’s great surreal object, subconscious labyrinth, his museum and crypt in a single block as the perfect physical metaphor of what the Land of the Free and the Brave has become, rooted in discontent and division. Numbers and disgruntled voters elected a baron imperialist who fancies to be king in his own fragmented image. The mirrors initially employed as flashes on various cameras mean to remind the viewer of Narcissus’ story, his fatal glimpse and self-devotion, and how your favourite president sees and has built himself up through false eyes. Clueless and determent, living a lie after another and other. The big wig is so bedevilled by the notion of fame and status he instinctively relies on controversy, shock and disbelief. In the words, of Oscar Wilde “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”, 'Trumposhka' possessed by his big-shot ego keeps on digging his own grave deeper and deeper to seem relevant.

Each layer is practically represented by a member of the surrounding cabinet and close family as a deconstruction of his own ideals submitted to scrutiny. This work in its entirety is a theoretical dissection of character, actions and consequences. A figurative onion put on display as the emulation of last century’s iniquities in a world split between anger, discontent and those trying to make amends.

Trophy daughter and her partner Nimrod (Nimrod, the son of Kush, founder of Babylon) embody the opposite side of the same coin, the Imperial tsar’s right and left hand. On one side, you have his beautiful angel-faced golden girl and apple of his eye whose beauty he admires from afar and awkwardly lusts for in public as a forbidden fruit.

Additionally the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as the golden goose princess is also renowned by her boosted model career due to family’s overreach and the under-wraps closing of several fashion stores overnight in consequence to her flammable accessories. While the left more subservient, but actually the right hand man and jack of all trades, executes orders unscrupulously with his tentacles in many pies to deny the head honcho’s involvement with plausible deniability, and chalking up most dealings under false pretences.

On the upper towers, two diametric femmes twain out of the inner circle to keep appearances: one to disavowal any knowledge of wrong doing, and the other to glitz and dazzle while the rhetoric magician does his trick in plain sight. A pattern noted throughout the autonomous puppet’s reign, one of the most memorable regarding asylum seekers and refugee children at the border being separated from their families, whilst press and officials overlooked basic human rights, and focused their prime coverage on a fashion item as a statement worth hours of debate.

Again the placement of these two polarised characters is not a coincidence for they are the smoke within sea of strings and puppeteers. I admittedly had another inscription in mind when painting this piece, “I once had strings, but now I'm free... There are no strings on me!”, even though it is a pop-culture reference from the MARVEL universe I found it very apt to describe the unhinged chaos that was to come in such a volatile age of breaking ties, resentment and making remakes.

Closing down the government was maybe a foreseeable prediction for someone who absolutely sees himself as an impeachable emperor, and I prayed it wouldn’t become a reality. The death of democracy and sealed fate of the poor, marginalised, minorities and the everyday individual were depicted being metaphorically squashed and defeated by another of Dali’s delusive creature, a triumphant elephant (in this case Republican) and a (Democrat) donkey at its feet. The elephant reminiscent of Dalí’s ‘Triumphant elephant’ (1975), in this instance toots his trumpet on a symbolic Imperial flag with a solitary star and absolute state.

A far cry from Socrates and Ancient Greece where democracy was originally founded, humpty dumpty's role as a head of state reads more as self-mutilation due to his own wrong doings, ignorant rhetoric, and colloquial bordering on slang oratory and legislative sentences as well as judgements totally contrary to the eloquent philosophers’ teachings.
The fool cradled in a bed of ignorance, fast food and foreign affairs did not land happiness but if anything the presidency was the platform which exposed his various unhappy marriages (including his current), estranged family relationships, false friendships, lack of experience and leadership, unpaid debts and plummeting losses and unethical questionably legal deals. An insatiable avarice he wishes to grow into a neo-monarchy.

'Trumposhka' basks in the political mess he rose from, for he believes he is the Chosen one to lead it back into its glory days of the Cold War, when fear-mongering Americans raced to the stores to get the latest homestead bunkers, women knew their place, men went to war and struggled to compete with technologic feats of the USSR and capitalism was booming with a fresh smile, all wrapped up into Ronald Raegan’s persona he so wishes to emulate. Not because he was a particularly good president but to be the actor of his own falsehood, one who has the charisma to hold on to Tinsel town where he so wishes to fit in.

The presidency did not humble him but elevated his jaded self into new aloof heights from which he and his ego will not admit any wrong doing or acknowledgement. All as the comical figure throws tantrums after scouring the media for mentions, taunting leaders to the brink with his Twitter football, nibbling like a walking billboard on Mcds and his cherry vanilla scoop on a silver spoon.

Cyanide berries and hemlock flowers bursting at the gates represent an administration full of self-harm cutting their nose off through perjury and background dealings to spite the face of integrity, duties, and responsibilities of what it means to uphold a presidency.

Ultimately, I constructed the gilded barred gates encrusted with the Mar-a-lago insignia as an allegorical ribbon wrapping the concept in a nutshell. The family crest so carelessly adopted by the president was granted by British authorities in 1939 to Joseph Edward Davies, the third husband of Marjorie Merriweather Post and the socialite who built the resort that is now his cherished getaway. Much like Edison appropriating other people’s projects, 'Trumposhka' isn’t shy of plagiarism with the Winter house being no exception as he seized Mr. Davies’ coat of arms for his own, besmirching it with one small improvement — replacing the word “integritas,” meaning integrity, with his own name.

The inscription buried between the clouds brings Trumposhka’s act to a close by reading “I take advantage of the laws of the nation. Because I'm running a company. I’ve got the hottest brand in the world”. Countless are the times, Trumposhka has boasted about his business triumphs although he inherited a substantial fortune, bankrupted multiple ventures and has admitted monotonously his proclivity for loopholes and back dealings with no regard for norms or consequence since he is in his under the delusion it is his divine right as a stable genius, best president to the day and a great guy.

A product of his age and nation.

I apologise for taking so long to release this artwork, it could have been prophetic instead of just capitulation and enlightenment and, thus I vow to not stand in my own way, to stop censoring, delaying and being extremely self-critical with myself. Thank you for believing in my vision :)