The artist who portrayed Donald Trump with a micropenis

BarcelonaThe artist Illma Gore (Brisbane, 1992) became famous in 2016 for a portrait of Donald Trump with a micropenis, titled Make America great again, which led to death and rape threats. A Trump supporter punched her after recognizing her on the street in Los Angeles, where she lived at the time. When she posted the portrait on Facebook, her account was shut down, accusing her of obscenity and nudity, and when they threatened to sue her if the work was sold, she turned it into an NFT.

Gore eventually put the portrait up for sale at London's Maddox Gallery for over €1 million, and it's now part of the collection of the Museum of Forbidden Art.Make America great again It affected my artistic career in a positive way. Personally, I wish I had a small penis [Gore is gender fluid]. And the one in the painting is a real body. I knew people would find it funny, but I didn't foresee the magnitude with which that piece impacted culture around the world," Gore explains in a video call with the ARA on the occasion of the exhibition. Apocalypse Now, that the Imaginart gallery dedicates until September 18th, her first solo exhibition in Spain. "All of this made me aware that you can't get frustrated, because people will always have their own opinions. It's just about learning to let go. Thanks to this, I grew as an artist, even though it scared me," she says.

Gore lived in Los Angeles for over ten years, but returned to Australia shortly before the last US election. "I was sued and ruined, and Australia is a slightly safer place now," she says of the artist, who doesn't know if she could return to California even if she wanted to: "It would be complicated because they're arresting people. I'd probably get in trouble because, even though I have issues with the police and my mother, I'm going against Trump. They put me on some list. And I think if they were to check my phone right now..."

As can be seen in one of the portraits on display at the Imaginart gallery, Gore has once again portrayed Trump naked, now as a raging, crying little angel, while the large painting that dominates the space, The death of Eros, imagines a fracas of more than twenty little angels characterized by the faces of a string of politicians, dictators and spiritual leaders of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Bashar al-Assad, Mahatma Gandhi, Che Guevara, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Adolf Hitler, Kim Mugabe, Polo Pot, Vladimir Putin, Pope John Paul II, Elizabeth II and Turkish President Erdogan. "They are in a volcanic, stormy area that represents a hell, a kind of purgatory. Depending on where you stand politically, you tend to see these leaders as some kind of mythical creatures, benevolent fathers who often, even if they are good, must commit atrocities or choose to do so because of the regime. Obama, who carried out drone strikes in the Middle East," says the artist, who in this painting has looked to the art of Francisco Goya, "where there is also an almost grotesque narrative element."