Billboard of alien Trump was inspired by John Carpenter cult classic ‘They Live’
Image created in 2015 for a horror film festival in Chicago finds a home in Mexico City
His skin is blue, his face contorted and his eyes bulge from his head, but the hair is unmistakable: that alien in the giant billboard over one of Mexico City’s busiest roads is Donald Trump.
In case the US president’s distinctive blond swirl didn’t tip you off, the artist has put an American flag in the background and framed the whole thing with Trump’s campaign slogan: “Make America great again.”
Ironically, this extraterrestrial Trump has landed in Mexico because he could not find a home in the United States.
American artist Mitch O’Connell created the work in 2015 for a horror film festival in Chicago headlined by the 1988 John Carpenter cult classic They Live.
But what began as a publicity poster turned into a zeitgeisty political statement, he said.
“I was drawing a poster of the They Live alien and the TV was on my drawing table. There was Trump, campaigning or doing something on television. And that hair is so distinctive. I’m looking at my drawing and at his hair and I said, ‘That hair would look fantastic on this alien,’” he said in a phone interview from Chicago.