A new art installation depicting Donald Trump as a naked, 43-foot-tall marionette is on the move, having been relocated from Las Vegas to Phoenix, Arizona this week.
The effigy, which is titled “Crooked and Obscene,” was set up in the Nevada desert last weekend and moved Thursday to, oddly enough, behind the BudSmart marijuana dispensary near Washington and 24th Street, according to AZ Central. Although it’s on private property, it’s hard to miss the towering satiric artwork.
Tom Yarak, who owns the Phoenix property, told Axios on Thursday that he was approached by a third-party broker who wanted to temporarily rent the location, not realizing how long it would be up.
He told the outlet that saw this as a purely business transaction and doesn’t have any personal animosity towards Trump saying, “I’m like Switzerland, brother.” Yarak said he does not know who owns the artwork.
According to AZ Central, individuals working on the installation chose not to identify themselves, but per a previous press release, portraying Trump in the nude “is intentional, serving as a bold statement on transparency, vulnerability and the public personas of political figures.”
Made of foam over rebar and weighing approximately 6,000 pounds, the gigantic naked Trump will travel the United States as part of the “Crooked and Obscene Tour.” See more photos of the marionette in our previous post.
The unknown artist wanted to start a conversation about “transparency — or lack thereof — in politics, challenging viewers to think critically about political influence” with the effigy, they said in a statement last month.
In reaction to the marionette’s Las Vegas appearance, the Nevadan Republican Party condemned it on Sept. 30 as “deplorable,” “offensive” and “designed intentionally for shock value rather than meaning full dialogue.”
It’s not clear whether the artist is the same one who created a naked Trump statue in 2016, one that was displayed on the Las Vegas strip on a float just before that year’s election.
Dates and cities for where the effigy will pop up next have not yet been announced.
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