Artist Statement: Trump Towers

Trump Towers rises like a dystopian skyline—four monolithic smokestacks constructed from rusted nuts and bolts, towering into the air like monuments to a dying age. Their surfaces are scorched, warped, and corroded, evoking the grime and permanence of unchecked industry. At the top of one tower, a vents spews toxic smoke.

This sculpture is not a celebration of strength or progress. It is a fossil—built in the image of a past that the Trump administration refuses to let go.

Trump Towers represents the Trump administration’s aggressive dismantling of environmental protections in favor of short-term fossil fuel profits. Where once the Clean Air Act and the EPA’s regulatory authority served to limit pollution, safeguard communities, and support a renewable future, the towers stand in their place—smoking ruins of what could have been.

Between 2025 and 2026, dozens of Biden-era environmental rules were repealed or gutted: methane emission standards rolled back, clean car mandates overturned, and fossil fuel leasing on public lands expanded. The Paris Agreement was abandoned once again. Investment in renewables was slashed in favor of drilling, fracking, and coal subsidies. The administration’s vision for America’s energy future was not wind, not sun—but smoke.

The name Trump Towers is intentionally ironic: it reclaims the branding of luxury and legacy, and reassigns it to what the administration is truly building—a legacy of pollution, extraction, and irreversible damage.

Yet, beneath the towers, if you look closely, green patina emerges where rust once ruled. Metal plates warp outward, as if the earth beneath is pushing back. Nature is resisting. The future is not yet lost—but it’s running out of breat