BY ALEXXA GOTTHARDT
“I thought you were North
Korea calling,” said artist Edel Rodriguez, half-joking, answering the phone
this afternoon. He’d just received word that another satirical cover he
designed for German magazine Der Spiegel had been published.
It features an illustration
of U.S. President Donald Trump with the body of a baby. His playmate, tottering
next to him atop a primitive nuclear bomb-cum-kiddie ride—similar in design to
the one the U.S. dropped on Nagasaki, effectively ending World War II—is none
other than the North Korean ruler, Kim Jong-un.
The cover boldly rebukes
the growing tensions between the U.S. and North Korea. The Kim regime tested
two nuclear devices in 2016. It has also significantly increased the frequency
of its missile tests, two of which have failed in the past month, one during
celebrations for the Day of the Sun, the state’s most important holiday.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has begun walking back America’s policy of
“strategic patience” towards North Korea’s provocations, with Trump having sent
an armada into the sea of Japan last week—albeit a few days after he said he
had.
“These two world leaders
are like babies playing with knives. We’re all scared of what they’re going to
do next, and I wanted to acknowledge that,” Rodriguez said.
While this is Rodriguez’s
first published illustration of Kim, the New York-based artist is no stranger
to forging scathing illustrations of Trump, which have been published in Der
Spiegel, TIME, and Politico. His first drawings of the current president
cropped up during the campaign, when Rodriguez, a Cuban immigrant, was offended
and angered by then-candidate Trump’s exclusionary, anti-immigrant rhetoric.
When Rodriguez left
Communist Cuba for the U.S. in 1980 at the age of eight, he believed he was
heading towards “the greatest country in the world,” where, he recalls his
father telling him, “I’d be free to do whatever I want, go wherever I want, and
say whatever I want.” Over the course of his 36 years in the U.S., his
expectations had been largely met. Now, however, he says the freedoms he so
valued are under threat.
Rodriguez says he couldn’t
stand it when many of his fellow citizens failed to take Trump’s stump speech
promises, or bid for presidency, seriously. “So I started making outrageous images
to spark people’s attention—to rile them up,” he said. “I wanted to communicate
that, to me, Trump was like a comet heading towards Earth.”
When Trump was elected
president, news outlets around the world responded with big, bold headlines.
But it was Der Spiegel that hit the presses with a cover that stood out from
the rest. The single compositionally simple illustration on the German
magazine’s cover captured the international shockwave of uncertainty and fear
that Trump’s election had set in motion. In it, an orange-faced, yellow-maned
comet hurtles towards Earth, mouth wide open as if ready to swallow the planet
whole.
The artist behind the image
was Rodriguez; the comet was Trump. And while Der Spiegel is a German-language
magazine (it hosts an English-language version on its website), Rodriguez’s
November 12th cover was shared around the world. The power of the image
transcended language barriers and national borders.
The reaction to Rodriguez’s
post-election cover paled in comparison to the international ruckus provoked by
a second collaboration between Der Spiegel and the illustrator published on
February 4th, just after news of the Trump administration’s first travel ban
broke. It showed Rodriguez’s now signature caricature of Trump wielding a
bloody knife in one hand, and the severed head of the Statue of Liberty in the
other. The illustration was flanked by a short, direct headline: “America
First.”
Der Spiegel had asked
Rodriguez to pitch another illustration that would communicate the vehement
resistance to the travel ban and other isolationist measures, by many
Americans, in the form of protests and country-wide organizing. He first
proposed several ideas, one of which showed a hand whose middle finger was
erect and resembled Trump. The magazine didn’t bite. But they did see an image
on Rodriguez’s Twitter feed—an early version of the Statue of Liberty
beheading—that intrigued them.
“I was shocked when they
said they wanted to publish it. I knew I’d crossed a line,” Rodriguez said.
“But I’d become so frustrated with people, even friends, telling me to temper
my views of Trump when we were around Trump supporters.”…….
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-meet-artist-der-spiegels-viral-trump-covers
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