U.S. The American artist behind the controversial statue of First Lady Melania Trump, who was unveiled this week in Kasya in her native Slovenia, has defended the act as a representation of her husband’s presidential contradiction.
Brad Downey, a fictional artist based in Berlin, Kentucky, said the statue, which replaces wood carvings destroyed in a terrorist attack in July, was inspired by his “frustrations with the policies of my home country.”
“On the one hand we keep people in cages on the U.S. border with Mexico, on the other hand, what is my clear contradiction, we have the first woman for whom English is not her mother tongue. , Whose U.S. Citizenship was fast on visas reserved for immigrants with extraordinary abilities. At the same time her husband is xenophobic, anti-Islam.
“I felt I could separate this contradiction and make a portrait of it.”
The statue, located on a poplar tree trunk near Sevanika, Trump’s hometown in southeastern Slovenia, is part of a project launched several years ago. It ends in the documentary, Melania, which depicts the revered artisan Alei “Maxi” Upevak, a professional pipe level, with no educational art school background, who has sculpted the folk art chain in his spare time.
“I chose Maxi from a lot of local artists because of the similarities between her life and Melania,” Downey said. “He was born in the same month and year and in the same hospital. Like her – her father was a mechanic and she grew up in a large family – she belongs to a working class family.
“I took the position that I would not control the aesthetics of the project. I keep an ideological distance, and nothing will force it. I gave her just one photo to work with, the moment she became the first woman. “
Downey bought a tree and cut it down in the right proportions as well as a plot of land on which the statue stands which gave him the right to e bho.
He paid Maxi to make the work, carved from a poplar tree. It shows Melania Trump dressed in a blue oo.
He stayed in the carving field for a year or so, until Downey arranged an unofficial unveiling, then picked up by the world’s media, who mocked him, comparing everything from a smurf to a scarecrow.
“I didn’t plan to make it as a meme,” Downey insisted, “although I don’t think I’m really surprised that it’s so harmonious.” Along with the locals he contacted, they praised the monument. “They came for the unveiling and we ate cake – with local melanza tort cream and nuts, and drank wine. My parents and wife flew. People said they liked it, “he said.
But he was shocked by the hate mail, “from the left and the right,” which, with media reactions, he said would be integrated into his ongoing “Melania” documentary series.
“On the one hand, people were criticizing me, and asking: ‘Why did you keep this woman’s monument?’, On the other hand, people were saying, ‘She looks better than him.’
Even in Slovenia, following a tradition of propaganda commemorative protocol, with a special focus on Cold War-era buses and statues, Down made a silicone cast of wooden statues last year, with a view to making bronze. That version.
“After Lenin took control of Russia after the October Revolution, he ordered the installation of thousands of wooden linins from Kyrgyzstan to Ukraine,” Down explained. “Over time, they gradually became more permanent bronze. The trend later spread to China. “
While the woodwork melania carvings were burned in an apparent terrorist attack on July 4 this year – some locals, Dunne says, “doubt the CIA’s involvement”, although police have yet to find the culprits – he quickly removed the burning and blistered remains. , Which was later exhibited in an art exhibition.
The bronze replica was made during the Covid-19L downdown, which forced him to stay in Slovenia, and was unveiled by Maxi on Wednesday, in the presence of about 20 locals who brought home-made wine with them.
A spokeswoman for the municipality of Selnica, Melania Trump’s hometown, told the Slovenian daily, Denevnik, that her rejection of the statue made it clear: “It does not suit our values to cultivate a sense of fellow human beings.”
Downey’s performance in Slovenia, in conjunction with the recent Black Lives Matter protest, has been nicely consistent with the statues’ pp bags, which are pushing the United States.
“While I agree with the BLM views, however, there is no need to pull down monuments, I thought in this case, this is like a side effect – a monument that is a monument of critique, a concept of power and supports it. ”
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