Make Everything Great Again | |
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Artist | Dominykas Čečkauskas and Mindaugas Bonanu |
Year | 2016 |
Type | Street art |
Dimensions | 250 cm × 450 cm (98 in × 177 in) |
Location | Vilnius, Lithuania |
Make Everything Great Again is a street art mural done by the artists Dominykas Čečkauskas and Mindaugas Bonanu. It is located on the wall of a barbecue restaurant in the railway station area of old town of Vilnius in Lithuania. It bears the provocative title "Keulė Rūkė" (The Pig Has Been Smoking). The mural depicting the US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump giving a French kiss to the Russian president Vladimir Putin was made known to the broad public on 13 May 2016. The caption Make Everything Great Again plays on Trump's campaign slogan "Make America Great Again". This image draws inspiration from the 1990s graffiti painting My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love portrayed on the Berlin Wall by Dmitri Vrubel. The artwork was completed with the use of the wheat paste technique.
Make Everything Great Again appeared on the wall after Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump exchanged statements of mutual admiration, with the President of Russia describing Donald Trump as "a very colorful person, talented without any doubt," with Donald Trump replying that it was "a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond."
One of the artists, Dominykas Čečkauskas, said in an interview: "We saw similarities between the two heroes (Trump and Putin). ... They both have an ego that is too big, and it is funny that they get along well." Čečkauskas said "We are in a sort of a Cold War again, and America may get a president who will want to be friends with Russia." The artists, with the help of the mural, predict that if Russia and the US would ever "marry" again, it would echo in the Baltic states too, be it tongues or tanks.