Remember artist Jeffrey Beebe’s 15-foot “Trump Rat,” famous for its presence outside Trump Tower in New York not long after the election? It’s baaack! BravinLee Projects, which has a booth in Miami at the Untitled art fair, has brought Beebe’s rat to Florida by way of a collaboration with lemon sky: projects + editions, installing it in a parking lot across the street from Churchill’s Pub, a 40-year old establishment in the neighborhood of Little Haiti.
Lee originally wanted to install the Trump Rat inside a fair. No such luck. “Nada rejected it,” he sighed. “Untitled rejected it. Miami Projects—someone wrote back and said, ‘Have you been drinking?’ ”
It’s no surprise that Churchill’s was game; the Miami New Times describes it as having a “a legacy of punk rock and total artistic freedom.”
For what it’s worth, outside Churchill’s pub is a large image of the face of Winston Churchill. So now Donald Trump, as a rat, is facing Churchill, as a pub. Make of that what you will.