A new proposal for the the US pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale just dropped: This time, irreverent artist Andres Serrano is throwing his hat in the ring, proposing a mausoleum for the country’s current president Donald Trump.
Serrano began amassing a collection of thousands of Trump-signed and branded objects in 2019, with the purchase of a miniature chocolate wedding cake for $1,880 that was gifted to guests at Trump’s nuptials with current wife Melania in 2005. The artist has since spent more than $200,000 on the collection.
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As such, Serrano’s US pavilion would present a multi-media portrait of the president. The project, titled The Game: All Things Trump, is also already a book, published in 2020 by Booth-Clibborn Editions. The angle of his Biennale proposal, however, arguably differs, with the compendium offered as a mausoleum—a nod not only to a past time, but to a very different version of Trump and America, which next year celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding.
In Italy, the work takes on added meaning, with a nod to those like the Mausoleum of Augustus erected for ancient Roman dictators not far from Venice in Rome.
Serrano’s proposal also involves the inclusion of his 2022 film Insurrection on Trump supporters’ storming of the US capitol on January 6, 2021, for which the artist spent months finding photographs and video footage from conservative social media platforms. It also offers an overview of archival and historical footage on US history.
“I can think of no one better to represent America than the president himself,” Serrano said in a statement.
Serrano, who was born in New York to Afro-Cuban and Honduran parents, further clarified in an interview with The Art Newspaper, “Donald Trump was elected twice as the president so if you believe in democracy, you have to say the people have spoken. Politics are everywhere, even on the kitchen table. There’s a fine line between politics and entertainment. The media is happy to give us both in the same breath.”
Serrano first captured Trump in 2004, when he sat for a portrait, as part of the artist’s “America” series (2001–04), citing Trump as the embodiment of the American Dream. The series includes the likes of A-list celebrities at the time like Snoop Dogg and Chloe Sevigny, alongside everyday US citizens.
“I believe that many of the objects in The Game: All Things Trump, reflect his sense of design, whether he designed them or they were designed for him. He had a hand in them. He has a keen eye. He knows a good visual when he sees one. You might even call him a conceptual artist,” Serrano added.
It remains unclear, however, if the US will even participate in the Venice Biennale, as the National Endowment for the Arts, which is expected to be eliminated under Trump, oversees the selection process.
Still, Serrano submitted the proposal earlier this month to the US State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) when the application portal opened in early May, already several months behind schedule.
Another possibility includes a proposal floated by far-right blogger and computer engineer Curtis Yarvin to turn the US pavilion into a space for “dissident-right art hos”. For his part, Yarvin told Vanity Fair that he plans to “Trumpify the Venice Biennale this year”, adding, “We’re gonna go in and reconstruct the American arts with one violent executive order and take over the whole fucking thing.”
The application portal is scheduled to close on July 30, with a decision to be announced on September 1.