Make America Great Again
If anyone is going to be threatened by a small penis, it’s Trump
The artist’s pencil drawing by feminist artist Illma Gore desplays the nude Donald Trump. The uploading of her artwork to a private Facebook group has resulted in what appears to be an indefinite ban from Facebook.
In a pastel painting called “Make America Great Again” Donald Trump the Republican presidential contender is shown stark naked, sporting only a gold chain. The painting has now gone viral, and furious Trump supporters are inundating the artist with online threats and abuse.
Gore allows Web surfers to download the portrait for free on her website, and also offering a censored version that has already appeared on some news sites.
Since then, Facebook has been periodically blocking her from accessing her profile as those of you who have shared it, although the work still remains on the page.
At 12pm on 29 April, the artist left her house to go to the art store. Had she known about the protests happening nearby, she probably would have stayed home. As she walked along Alivira Street, a car full of young people pulled up beside her, yelling slurs at her as she walked by. The only thing she heard clearly was “TRUMP 2016!”
As she approached the stopped car without looking away from her phone, she heard the passenger-side door open. She looked up, and a slender man got out of the car and punched her in the face as the group began to laugh and cheer the action on.
“TRUMP 2016!” he yelled.
She didn’t fall from the impact of the hit, but she stepped back to catch herself, and in doing so, tripped over on to the grass and watched her phone skid across the pavement. It happened so quickly the man had already fled, laughing, with his friends as she hit the ground.
The Los Angeles-based artist’s work is based around political topics and the physical self, the significance and importance we place on our bodies. She don’t think one should be emasculated by their penis size. The genitals shouldn’t define the power, or the status, or the gender.
One of her most famous works was a 2015 project, “Tattoo Me,” in which she tattooed her body with names crowdsourced from the Kickstarter and GoFundMe websites for $10. “It’s about striving to give oneself to others on a canvas that breathes, a canvas that can’t be sold in a gallery,” she told The Guardian last year. From Kickstarter Gore got kicked off with no explanation.
Gore speaks sincerely about the importance of her piece’s permanence: “It’s about striving to give oneself to others on a canvas that breathes, a canvas that can’t be sold in a gallery. That’s what interests me. Tattoo Me is about exercising ultimate individualism, while handing oneself over to the whims of the world we live in.”
As she fends off Trump trolls online, Gore says her latest artwork has the same message as her previous work. Gore, naturally, is frustrated by the entire situation and the ban from facebook and the seemingly arbitrary way websites react to different images.
“Who decides this hierarchy of ‘fine art?’” Gore said. “And why is this value judgement being placed on artworks for sale in an online market place or social media ? More importantly, why other than an attempt to try an censor the image, should eBay or Facebook ever prevent me or any other contemporary artist from selling or posting their work?”
Read more about it at Hyperallergic