New York City-born artist and provocateur Andres Serrano wants the United States Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale to showcase his apparently uncritical display of more than a thousand Trump memorabilia items, including a flattering, warm-hued portrait of the president he took in 2004 as part of his series America.
Serrano, who rose to notoriety in the late ’80s for “Piss Christ” (1987), a photograph of a crucifix that he plunged into a receptacle of his own urine on the National Endowment for the Arts’ dime, submitted his Trump-themed Venice proposal to the US Department of State ahead of its deadline later this month. The artist calls his American flag-saturated vision The Game: All Things Trump, a reference to an underperforming board game released by Milton Bradley Company in 1989.
The Trump administration’s new guidelines for Biennale proposals say that the designs will be evaluated based on criteria including artists’ “ability to showcase American exceptionalism.”
Under the new stipulations, prospective artists wishing to represent the US in the event are prohibited from “promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” and using award funds to support the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides humanitarian aid to Palestinians. The Department of State’s application mandates that Biennale programs assume a “non-political character.”
When Hyperallergic asked Serrano if he believes his work complies with that criteria, he replied via a publicist, “Of course, I’m not political. I don’t judge, I observe.”
Serrano’s pavilion proposal repurposes the name and objects of a 2019 Manhattan exhibition that presented $200,000 worth of Trump relics amassed by the artist, including a diploma from the defunct Trump University, an 11-foot sign spelling “EGO” from the shuttered Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, autographed portraits, and presidential campaign signs. The proposal also includes Serrano’s controversial film about the January 6 Capitol takeover, Insurrection (2022), which critics described as sensational, lacking context, and even pro-Trump.
In response to Hyperallergic‘s question about whether his pavilion design was meant to be ironic, Serrano said, “My work is always open to interpretation, even my ideas are open to interpretation. Artists are not one way or another, they represent different things to different people.”
In 2024, Trump was photographed grinning while holding Serrano’s exhibition book and reportedly added it to his library at Mar-a-Lago. Serrano has described Trump’s apparent endorsement of the book as “comical,” but has also stated in the context of the president that he will “never speak ill of people who’ve posed for [him].” The photographer also took a smiling portrait of child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2019, months before the financier was found dead in his jail cell awaiting trial for charges of trafficking dozens of minors in the early 2000s. His photographs have also portrayed Snoop Dog, hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan, and morgue corpses.
Serrano could have quietly submitted his proposal to the Department of State, but said he decided to publicly promote his mock-up pavilion with a specific goal.
“I decided to publicize it because I’m hoping the President will see it. It makes sense to me that for America’s 250th Celebration, there’s no one better to represent America than the President,” Serrano told Hyperallergic in an email.
It’s intellectually lazy to be asked asked one’s intention and reply: “My work is always open to interpretation, even my ideas are open to interpretation.” ALL work, all ideas are open to interpretation. We’re going to do the work on our end, he should man up and do the work on his. Because whether Serrano intends it to be ironic or not, the fact that’s he’s gone from “Piss Christ” to “The Game” is freaking spectacular. (From “spectacle” = The Middle English “specially prepared or arranged display.”)
Serrano did not “plunge [a crucifix] into a receptacle of his own urine on the National Endowment for the Arts’ dime.” He composed, shot and printed the photograph before entering it into the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art’s “Awards in the Visual Arts” competition, which was sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
For some reason my comment posted yesterday disappeared, so here goes again…
Serrano is absolutely brilliant. A wizard. That he declared Trump’s endorsement of his 2019 work “comical” tells everyone what we need to know. He is presenting. That’s it. Trump self describes his monumental ego every minute of every day and rolls in his self glory like a pig in mud. That US elites, and unfortunately society, have placed this empire building con man at it’s helm to drive US empire over the 99% of the world like a military tank, is the ultimate irony. It seems to me, as I “interpret” this work, that as in other of Serrano’s works, he is presenting what he sees, in forms that clearly focus on representations that are projected into our daily lives. Those representations, rather than being seen as representations, manifest mass behaviors, social programming if you will. Like the American flag, or any flag. It’s just an image. As Mark Twain points out “patriotism is the refuge of the scoundrel”. That we know this self-proclaimed exceptionalism, abroad and domestically, yet cheer the flag that cloaks a brutal exploitative empire, is the highest irony. Presenting this to the world’s most important visual art forum, in a self declarative form, is a coming out for US empire. Serrano’s proposal photo of the US Pavilion, and the show, is a deeply deserved, self-delivered, punch in the nose.
Thank you, Andres!!!
“who’s zoomin’ who ?”
what would Hans Haacke do?