A WOODEN statue mocking US President Donald Trump has been burned to the ground in Slovenia, the birthplace of his wife Melania.
The nearly eight-metre tall construction, erected last year in a village in the north east of Slovenia, showed Trump with his trademark hairstyle. His right arm – fist clenched – was raised high like New York’s Statue of Liberty. When triggered, a mechanism inside the statue opened a red-painted mouth and shark-like teeth used to appear.
Slovenian police are looking for the arsonist.
“Like all populists, the statue has two faces,” its creator Tomaz Schlegl said when he unveiled the statue last August.
Although the construction quickly became a tourist attraction, some villagers were unhappy with its appearance, pledging to torch it by Halloween. It had to be moved to another village in the area.
Milan Balazic, the mayor of Moravce, where the statue ended up, said that unknown arsonists burned it.
He said the torching “is a symbol of intolerance towards artistic projects in our society”.
It is not the first time in Slovenia that a member of the Trump family has been carved in wood.
A life-size sculpture of the US first lady cut from the trunk of a linden tree was unveiled in her home town Sevnica last June, drawing mixed reactions from residents.
The first lady settled in New York in 1996 and met Trump two years later. There are mixed feelings about her in Slovenia, and people hoped that she would promote her picturesque Alpine home country after Trump took office. But she has rarely mentioned Slovenia in her public appearances and has not visited the small central European country since Trump’s inauguration.
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