The Secret Handshake:Reflections on a Changing City

Earlier this month, after visiting the Banksy × Basquiat exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum for one of my classes, I took my bike around the National Mall to get a feel for the changes infecting our city. Unshaken by the National Guard troops on every corner—whose presence, while not yet normal for me, is by now expected—I made my way by the Department of Labor towards the Capitol. The 40-foot glowering poster of our Commander-in-Chief touting an absurd affinity with the American “common folk” struck me with uncanny familiarity. The banner echoed the militaristic state-mandated photos of dictators past.

I cycled on to find my grail—a statue erected, removed, and re-installed in full view of the Capitol on the National Mall. The statue bears likeness to our aforementioned Commander-in-Chief and a certain iniquitous pedophile. The pair, cast in bronze, skip together gleefully, frozen in a moment of bawdy rapture. Each figure rests on his own marble pedestal. The two hold hands and beam towards each other across the gap. A plaque between the pedestals reads: “In Honor of Friendship Month: We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend,’ Jeffrey Epstein.” A hand heart image follows, preceded by: “Voice Over: There Must Be More To Life Than Having Everything.” Each pedestal bears an additional plaque with relevant imagery and text from Trump’s famed birthday card to Epstein. The statue is visibly battered from its first removal, but the scars from its attempted destruction only further reinforce its character of defiance. The figures are just slightly smaller than life-size, and the viewing experience is very much impacted by its locality—with a changing backdrop of the Capitol building from the front, the Labor Department with its fascistic banner from the side, the National Mall and Washington Monument from the back, and a platoon of the National Guard loitering uneasily from the other side.

Image Credits: Brigid O'Connor

There is ample political analysis to be made of this statue: the significance of the statue’s apparition in this particular moment where this issue seems to have found the fissure crack to fracture the MAGA party; the statue’s crude exposure of an embarrassing truth to attack the shiny veneer of authoritarianism; its demand that the president be brought to account in the court of public

opinion.

However, equally as revealing is a careful aesthetic consideration of the work. The shiny bronze and rich marble work, produced by an anonymous artist collective called the Secret Handshake, is a clear reference to and mockery of gaudy Trumpian aesthetics. Trump has long been known for his utter lack of artistic taste. He has been described as “camp” and recent horrifyingly ludicrous examples of his AI creations (“Trump Gaza,” “Trump Pope”) confirm his manipulation of aesthetics to assert power. Like many dictators before him, Trump seeks to legitimize his power through visual domination, oftentimes drawing on neoclassical artistic sensibilities. The Secret Handshake clearly grasps Trump’s love for pomp and circumstance, as they ironically employ the same visual tactics of grandiosity to call out the fallibility and falsity behind the glittering gold.

Additionally, the Secret Handshake’s choice to represent Epstein and Trump in child-like, whimsical poses both draws attention to the fundamental sin that the statue represents and critiques the President’s immaturity. I am reminded of political comic artist Maja Berezowska’s series of caricatures called The Love Affairs of the Sweet Adolf (1934). Published in a satirical French magazine during World War II, her drawings capitalize off of salacious rumors about Hitler’s love affairs and depict him engaged in lewd and perverse acts. In much the same way, this statue seeks to dismantle Trump’s cloak of power and prestige through public embarrassment. The demagogue’s Achilles’ heel is damage to his public image. Thus, the Secret Handshake follows in the footsteps of many protest artists before them by exposing, humiliating, and discrediting Donald Trump.

I hope this statue continues to stand as a beacon of defiance against a corrupt regime. As Trump claims a victory lap for his miraculous “peace plan” for the Middle East, this statue reminds us not to be distracted by the president’s tactics of deception. The statue calls upon the American public to anchor its attention to this serious and very divisive issue which threatens to topple Trump’s chokehold on our democracy. The question remains: Will we listen?

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Brigid O'Connor is a senior in the College double majoring in Justice and Peace Studies and Studio Art and minoring in Arabic.