When the Hungarian sculptor Peter Szalay erected a rainbow-hued Statue of Liberty in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in Budapest he did not expect it to survive for much longer than a fortnight. In the end hardcore nationalists contrived to deface and demolish the sculpture within 24 hours.
Black Lives Matter (BLM), which first emerged in the US in 2013, is regarded with suspicion by Hungary’s strictly conservative government and has become a symbol of godless multiculturalism for the country’s far-right groups.
Szalay’s 3ft tall, 3D-printed sculpture depicted the Statue of Liberty kneeling with a raised fist. In December it was one of seven temporary artworks announced by Krisztina Baranyi, the independent mayor of the city’s ninth district. Pro-government media likened it to putting up a statue of Hitler. Gergely Gulyas, chief of staff to Viktor Orban, the right-wing prime minister, said that BLM was a “fundamentally racist movement that doesn’t acknowledge white people and people of colour as equal”.
Eventually the statue was installed in Ferenc square, a few hundred metres from the east bank of the Danube, last Thursday. Within minutes members of the Legio Hungaria, a neo-Nazi organisation, encased the sculpture in chipboard, plastered with political posters and crowned with wooden crosses. Another vandal later doused the statue in white paint. Police set up a cordon and briefly deployed armed guards but early the next day the artwork was toppled by three Legio Hungaria members.
Szalay was philosophical. “In fact, I made it with precisely this purpose in mind,” he told Azonnali, an independent news website. “I even liked the box they put up, because it protected the statue. But they could perhaps have added a few eyeholes for people to peep through.”
