It is said that art is not what you see, but what you make others see. When it comes to my nude painting of Donald Trump, some say I’ve made them see too much. But I believe the human body is the ultimate work of art.
For two months I have been under attack by Donald Trump and his supporters for painting the presumptive Republican nominee with a small penis. I’ve received death threats, rape threats and anonymous phone calls demanding I remove the image from my social media accounts or risk going to court.
And last week, as I was walking in my neighborhood in Los Angeles, a Trump supporter punched me in the face.
At 12pm on 29 April, I left my house to go to the art store. Had I known about the protests happening nearby, I probably would have stayed home. As I walked along Alivira Street, a car full of young people pulled up beside me, yelling slurs at me as I walked by. The only thing I heard clearly was “TRUMP 2016!”
Over the past few months, I have become accustomed to being recognized, and Trump supporters and protesters alike have approached me in public spaces. I had always been able to distinguish between friendly and unfriendly conversations, and this was hostile.
I messaged my partner to tell her what was happening, continued to ignore them and kept my head down, looking at my phone, taking deep breaths. As I approached the stopped car without looking away from my phone, I heard the passenger-side door open. I looked up, and a slender man got out of the car and punched me in the face as the group began to laugh and cheer the action on.
“TRUMP 2016!” he yelled.
I didn’t fall from the impact of the hit, but I stepped back to catch myself, and in doing so, tripped over on to the grass and watched my phone skid across the pavement. It happened so quickly the man had already fled, laughing, with his friends as I hit the ground.
I held myself from shouting back: “Is that all you got?” My mouth has gotten me into trouble in the past and I did not want them to circle back, so I kept quiet. I felt my eye begin to swell and the immediate frustration and lack of control left me incredibly sad. I called friends and I went straight to the police and filed a report with the LAPD on Wilshire. I’ve now learned that, in a conversation with the Guardian, the LAPD confirmed my account but said that without a license plate, photograph or any video, it would be hard to track down whoever did it.
I published my portrait of Trump on Facebook on 9 February, and could never have anticipated what the next few weeks were going to hold. Within 24 hours, my work was on the front page of Reddit and banned from Facebook. In three days, it had been viewed over 50m times. A few days after that, I was slapped with a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice – a legal complaint filed by a third party through Facebook, arguing their copyright was being violated by me.
When I started painting in January, I felt that if anyone would be threatened by a fictional small penis, it’s Trump. But I didn’t anticipate that his dislike would be so personal; he went so far as to defend his penis size during the Republican debate on 4 March.
The body I painted is not fictional – it is a portrait of a friend. In portraying his body with Trump’s face, I wanted to raise questions about how we think about gender: if I painted Trump with a massive penis, why would we then take it as a signal that he is powerful? Why would a small penis be viewed as effeminate? And what is wrong with effeminacy to begin with?
Faced with the anonymous copyright filing, I had two options: delete my Facebook page where I had originally posted the work, or counter the threat. This wasn’t really a choice: I had done nothing wrong. Whose copyright had I violated? The work was mine. But in countering the complaint, I had to give my personal information (including my address) to the anonymous third party and Facebook.
This made me nervous, especially since I was already getting a barrage of death threats. I requested Facebook tell me who the complainant was – Facebook policy stated it would provide it in such cases. I also didn’t take the painting down.
Not long after this complaint was filed, I received a phone call from a person claiming to be from Trump’s legal team, demanding I take the image down or face legal ramifications. I asked for this complaint to be sent to me on paper and hung up. I never received it.
Emboldened to fight those attempting to oppress my freedom of expression, I uploaded the artwork for anyone to download on my website. I also reached out to galleries in the hope of exhibiting it, with no luck at first. I believe US galleries were scared to show it – scared of going up against Trump, scared of receiving the same threats I did.
Maddox Gallery, in London, finally took on the controversy and put it up for public viewing on 11 April, where it remains. The piece was priced at £1m ($1.44m). The announcement led to another phone call from the alleged Trump team stating again that if I were to sell the painting, I was liable for a right of publicity lawsuit because I was using Trump’s face for profit – again, I asked for the paperwork and hung up. Nothing ever arrived.
If the painting does sell, I will donate a portion of the payment to Safe Place for Youth, a homeless shelter for youth in Los Angeles.
My face has been swollen all week. There is still bruising around my eye, and the red marks from the burst blood cell remain. But still, people wonder if I am making this up. Is being hit in the face a grand hoax or performance art? No. It is sad; it is a part of the painting as a whole; it is indicative of this election, how Trump is inciting violence and splitting America apart.
As for what it means for me as an artist – nothing. I will continue to create art. Art is supposed to evoke an emotion. Art represents the time we live in. All I want to do is make better and better art, black eyes and all.
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