When a wood statue of Melania Trump was erected close to her hometown in Slovenia final yr, it was mocked as wanting like a Smurfette or a scarecrow. Then it was set on fireplace.
Now, the artist who commissioned it’s again with a brand new one — and this sculpture, fabricated from bronze, is meant to have a extra enduring legacy.
“With the Black Lives Matter protests, there’s been a bent to tear down monuments, so I wished to put in a everlasting one,” the artist, Brad Downey, an American, mentioned in a phone interview from Slovenia on Wednesday.
Though Mr. Downey mentioned he didn’t assist President Trump or his anti-immigrant insurance policies, the artist mentioned that Mrs. Trump’s origins obliquely contradicted her husband’s views. “We’ve bought a president who’s towards immigration, however his spouse is an instance of profitable immigration,” Mr. Downey mentioned.
The sculpture is one among a number of vacationer attracts which have arisen in Sevnica, a city of 5,000 individuals in jap Slovenia the place Mrs. Trump grew up, within the time since her husband started his 2016 presidential election marketing campaign. Since he grew to become the front-runner, the city has organized Melania-themed tours and offered Melania wine, Melania slippers and Melania salami — and attracted 20,000 guests a yr within the course of.
Final yr, Mr. Downey commissioned an area people artist to carve a rustic sculpture of Mrs. Trump out of a tree trunk, depicting the primary woman waving her hand and sporting an outfit that evoked the powder-blue cashmere gown she wore at her husband’s inauguration in 2017. The folks artist was born in the identical hospital as Mrs. Trump — and across the identical time — and Mr. Downey had interviewed him for a movie about immigration.
The statue was erected on the banks of the Sava river close to Sevnica. However in July, a yr after its set up, arsonists set the sculpture on fire, damaging its face.
Mr. Downey had the charred sculpture moved to his short-term studio in Slovenia shortly afterward, and has since exhibited the broken work in a seaside city close to Sevnica.
He mentioned that he had lengthy wished to make a bronze reproduction, and that the anti-racism protests in the USA and abroad this yr after the police killing of George Floyd had pushed him to take action.
The brand new sculpture — a life-size, monochrome work created by one other Slovenian craftsman and unveiled by Mr. Downey on Tuesday — stands on the identical tree trunk as the previous one.
An connected plaque dedicates it to “the everlasting reminiscence of a monument to Melania which stood at this location.”
