Vesna Bukovec

Democracy Today

Year: 2016
Technique: ink on paper, 29,7 x 21 cm

The drawing of Donald Trump depicting three of his characteristic aggressive gestures was created at the end of 2016, after his election as president of the United States.

The caption under the drawing ‘How to fail successfully’ is also a title of another set of drawings I made in 2011. In that series of drawings the topic was the distress of an individual in the contemporary society driven by values such as success, health and happiness. In social psychology the term self-handicapping is used to describe the process by which people avoid effort in the hopes of keeping potential failure from hurting their self-esteem.
As the title suggests, in the ‘Democracy Today’ drawing I am referring to the state of democracy and politics in today’s world, where the United States is still a leading global force and an example to Western-style democracies. Donald Trump being elected president is a painful reflection of the so-called post-factual politics, demagogy and populism. It tells us that the democracies and politicians have failed completely, because for some time now we can no longer talk about their commitment to the common public good. The above-mentioned individual self-handicapping is reflected on the level of society in acceptance of obvious lies and false promises. The personal success of Trump is thus the failure of society and democracy. With the use of term fail I am also referencing the known internet meme FAIL.