The Emperor Has No Balls

Refusing to remain silent on Donald Trump’s ‘miraculous’ political rise, INDECLINE – the American activist collective responsible for ‘the world’s largest illegal graffiti‘ – worked with artist and sculptor Ginger to create grotesque statues of a naked Trump, which have been erected in five major US cities.

The Emperor Has No Balls video

INDECLINE has said this project, The Emperor Has No Balls, is one of the most ambitious and logistically demanding undertaken by the collective since its inception in 2001.

‘As Donald Trump miraculously inched his way towards the Republican Party nomination, we couldn’t help but watch in awe, completely dismayed as one of the world’s biggest potential threats stole the hearts and minds of our country’s most malleable – and in some cases fanatical – citizens.’

INDECLINE
The Emperor Has No Balls

Creating monsters

In spring INDECLINE set out to source a sculptor who would be tasked with creating five life-size statues of Donald Trump. These statues would be transported to major US cities to be installed in broad daylight in high-traffic areas using an industrial strength epoxy.

The installation would commence and be fully documented on the same day, at the same time, in each of the five cities.

After a few weeks of auditioning potential sculptor candidates, ‘Ginger’ – a Cleveland-based artist with an impressive penchant for the macabre – was chosen to collaborate with INDECLINE.

The objective was to source an artist who could accurately and skilfully capture both realistic and grotesque human attributes.

Working exclusively in the Horror genre, Ginger maintained a familiarity with creating monsters that translated perfectly when tasked with creating Donald Trump.

Ginger started this project with no particular political alliance between Trump or Clinton, but by the time he was done researching the candidate and meticulously working on every square inch of his clay figure, he had become one of Trump’s most outspoken critics.

The temporary nature of each of the five statues became the project’s working metaphor. Each of the pieces would have a limited amount of time before the city or the police covered or removed them completely. It would be highly probable at that point that these five statues would never be seen again.