As workers erect a towering Christmas tree on Basel‘s vibrant Marktplatz, not all parts of the city center prepare for the same festive mood. Just a hundred meters away, at a place called Kunstmeile, instead of a nativity scene, a crucified man is displayed in a showcase window, recalling a whole different holiday. A passerby kneels before the arresting image, not to make his Christian bow, but to take a better photograph of the information board describing the artwork; a controversial British artist, Mason Storm, poses a question: Saint or Sinner? And the man on the cross is none other than Donald Trump.
Is “Saint or Sinner?” a meaningful critique or a cheap shock art?
Famed for Basel museums (for instance, Kunstmuseum Basel artworks form the world’s oldest public art collection), this Swiss city is not a stranger to debate-stimulating art. But when the orange president arrived in Rümelins-Passage, now rechristened Kunstmeile, curiosity levels spiked. The number of pedestrians cutting through a walkway connecting Gerbergasse and Rümelinsplatz practically doubled.
Brought to Basel by Galerie Gleis 4, a Zug-based gallery specializing in pop-up exhibitions, Mason Storm’s artwork “Saint or Sinner?” seems to have struck a soft nerve at a delicate moment.
When global security is interlocked with the unpredictable whims of an autocrat-brat, is the artist truly asking whether we believe in Donald Trump’s holiness? Maybe the artistic depiction doesn’t need a saintliness check, but a sanity check.
“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable” is a maxim attributed to Banksy, a street art provocateur and supposedly Storm’s former employer. But not everything that disturbs comfort automatically qualifies as art.
While an orange-tanned and orange-clad US president spreads his tied, victim-like hands in Basel’s shop window, viewers are left to wonder: is “Saint or Sinner?” a meaningful critique or a cheap shock art?
Kunstmeile Basel – the art artery with no closing hoursKunstmeile Basel is located at the place where movie enthusiasts gathered at a former Studio Central, the city's first underground cinema
As a 24/7 public art promenade in the heart of Basel’s Old Town, Kunstmeile Basel was launched in December 2024, on the initiative of its founder, Lakis Sgouridis, an artist and cultural entrepreneur with Greek-Spanish roots.
From 1956 till 2020, the Rümelins-Passage or Gerber-Passage was known as the entrance to Studio Central, Basel's first basement cinema that could fit 233 movie fans.
Nowadays, the 150-meter passageway, with "Kunst Meile, herzen von Basel" sign at its entrance, features rotating exhibitions in street-facing vitrines, giving space to both emerging and established artists.
Unlike its namesake art miles in Hamburg (Kunstmeile Blankenese) and Berlin (Kunstmeile im Weitlingkiez), which display art in shop windows during festive, limited-run periods, Basel Kunstmeile exhibitions are accessible around the clock, democratizing access to the arts throughout the year.
Basel gives Trump the finger
“Oh, he is so small”, someone blurts out upon seeing the lifelike sculpture. Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, as if detained in Guantánamo Bay, and strapped to a white padded cross, the reclining hyperrealistic figure of Donald Trump looks instantly familiar. The realization that the mannequin’s only half-size almost seems like a letdown.
A young woman strolls past, grinning broadly, pausing just long enough to strike her own crucifixion pose.
“He should be hanging upside down”, an older man with a wild beard bellows from behind. “He is a freaking Antichrist!”
Displayed in front of a black-and-white comic-style mural, the “saint or sinner” Trump shines bright. But the background doesn’t feel just like a chaotic collage of imagery. There are superhero saviors, a rampaging Godzilla, and, stealing the scene, a nun flipping the double middle finger. Her gesture recalls this year’s Basel Fasnacht, a carnival parade where an anti-Trump marching band played flutes and drums behind middle-finger masks.
The artist proposed a Roman “thumb up – thumb down” referendum, but Basel already picked a finger to flip
As he turns his head away from the saluting sister, eyes firmly shut, the biggest Narcissus among all US presidents, who inspired the No Kings Movement, now finds himself sharing the exhibition room with different kinds of kings: the tongue-wagging Lällekönig and King Kong, Hollywood‘s tragic alpha ape.
The whole set-up could be read as a nuanced gallery mockery, but what comes from Mason Storm is just the crucified effigy of Donald Trump, and the box it was delivered in. Even the parcel makes a statement. On the crate, the word ‘FRAGILE’ blazes in red capitals, with a smaller subtitle underneath – ‘IDEOLOGY’.
Who is Mason Storm?
Mason Storm is a London-born, informally trained contemporary artist known for fusing classical art tropes with modern icons.
Hidden behind a designer balaclava, he maintains a mysterious public persona, claiming he has a background in martial arts, security, intelligence, law, and journalism.
Even if working anonymously himself, the artist hit mainstream headlines in 2010 after threatening to reveal Banksy's true identity, as a marketing stunt.
When Mason Storm released "Monkey Parliament" painting (2022), he practically suggested he was the long-rumored ghost painter for Banksy's "Devolved Parliament" (2009), a chimp-filled canvas that fetched a staggering £9.9 million at auction.
Yet Storm has never come close to matching the fame of his supposed former boss. His Instagram account, boldly titled @masonstormgenius (and self-billed as "the artist people love to love and love to hate"), is followed by 7.5k followers, a figure dwarfed by Banksy's 13.8 million fans.
Mason Storm's art leans heavily on political and pop culture commentary, producing paintings like "Your Name's Not Down You're Not Coming In" (Pope Francis as Berghain-style bouncer for paradise) and"ICON's"(the Last Supper served with a Big Mac, fries, and a Coke).
Mason Storm’s Gospel of Trump
While exposed to the curious stares of passers-by, the mini-Trump behind the gallery glass could be a moral crash-test dummy, exposed to our condemning views as we wait for that lethal injection to be administered.
This is what Mason Storms wants us to reflect on – on guilt and forgiveness, on “how and according to what criteria do we judge”. The artist almost steps into Christ‘s sandals, handing out the biblical stone into our hands, and wondering who will throw it against the window first.
The President is shot
By portraying Donald Trump as a victim of judgment, while hiding his own stance not just behind the fabricated “saint or sinner” dilemma, but also a rather phlegmatic question mark, Mason Storms seems to fail to own the provocation.
Protected by his identityless balaclava, he claims to leave the answer to the viewer, while simultaneously lecturing us that “in a world full of extreme opinions, people are quick to condemn or immunize, without nuances”.
No, in Trump’s case, “the line between light and shadow” is not that fine. Even the President who inspired the artwork, recently shared thoughts that he might not be “heaven-bound”, believing there was nothing that could get him closer to heaven than Air Force One.
This, of course, doesn’t mean that Donald Trump doesn’t have a messiah complex, or that, occasionally, he doesn’t love to entertain the idea of his holiness.
But how did Trump’s pathological level of grandiosity, sprinkled with all his good deeds and imaginary wars he stopped and lives he saved, become a valid qualification for sanctification? At what point did the art that springboards the idea of the President’s divinity (oh, pardon me, the artist is just “posing a question”) become an exercise in a supposedly provocative exhibition of courage?
If you want to witness a real-life crucifixion, see how they do it at the Maleldo Festival.
The passion of the Donald – a colossal miscasting?
The big beautiful sinner was originally destined for Basel’s SBBCentral Train Station in September. But due to “expected large crowds and feared disturbances” presenting a security risk, Galerie Gleis 4 postponed the exhibition and, in the meantime, found a new temporary home for the President dummy – the Vitrine 45 of Kunstmeile Basel.
As soon as the news broke that Mason Storm’s installation, previously shown by Bakershouse Gallery (Graz) at Vienna‘s Art Austria Fair in May, would head for Basel, critical voices started questioning the artwork’s lack of taste. And not for the fact that dummy Trump’s shoes are orange Crocs.
From Jani Leinonen’s McJesus to Mason Storm’s McDonald, crucifying an icon is a fast-food gastronomy for hungry masses
Simon Peng-Keller, a theology professor at the University of Zurich, told the Catholic media outlet kath.ch that Storm’s piece amounted to “cheap scandalous art”, arguing the artist failed to question the dominant US narrative that allows Trump to style himself as a victim or martyr.
“One could speak of a colossal miscasting”, Peng-Keller said. “If one wanted to locate Donald Trump in the Passion story, his place would not be on the side of the crucified, but on that of the representatives of the brutal Roman Empire, who wash their hands in innocence and write decrees in their fortresses and palaces that plunge countless people into poverty, misery, and death.”
People visiting Kunstmeile Basel since the “Saint or Sinner?” was displayed on November 1st were not countless
Despite protests from Swiss Catholics who felt the installation mocked their faith, Kunstmeile held firm and went ahead with posing the question in central Basel: “Saint or Sinner?”
The pedestrian walkway that typically sees about 1000 visitors a day, suddenly hit its all-time record.
Within the first week of unveiling in November, the electronic counter documented nearly 16.000 visitors – a resurrection in foot traffic any church would be proud of.
If you're exploring the town and are short on budget, it's good to know that there are plenty of free things to do in Basel. This includes the world's tiniest, Hoosesagg Museum, also displayed in a small window. Plan your itinerary now!
Saint or Sinner? – Conclusion
It is perfectly legitimate for art to provoke and pose uncomfortable questions. What makes Mason Storm’s artwork deeply cowardly is not the fact that the artist hides his identity behind some anonymous-porn-maker mask. The troublesome fact is that he throws the US President’s crucified mini-me before the crowds, in the role of a modern Pontius Pilate, giving his fake moral dilemma a democratic aura.
Asking whether Donald Trump might be a saint is not a provocation for a thinking brain, but an insult
No, it is not up to each viewer to decide whether that symbolic puppet of a midget playing the world’s greatest cop should suffer for his sins, or be canonized for his selfless peacemaking (what?). In fact, the viewer can always choose their own answer, and doesn’t need the artist’s permission to think.
However, the artist who washes his hands of artistic responsibility, hiding behind both “or” and a question mark in what is marketed as a bold, biting political statement, is not opting for being neutral. The artist is being neutered.
In a world where even Donald Trump’s most devoted admirers (including Donald Trump himself, the undisputed president of that fan club) don’t invoke the saintliness of His Highness, asking whether he might be a saint is not a provocation for a thinking brain, but an insult. One doesn’t need to be a Christian to feel disgust over such a forged moral riddle.
Donald Trump is no saint. Even if, in some perverted version of heaven, he were granted sainthood, it would certainly be as the patron saint of sinners. Trump is a proud and ruthless sinner, a sufferer only in the wet dreams of Fox News, MAGA cultists, and potentially, Mason Storm.
“Saint or sinner?” might have satisfied the surface-level curiosity of casual pedestrians and got Basel talking. But from the courageous painter of the “Monkey Parliament?” (mistakenly titled as “Monkey Parliament”), especially on the safe terrain of nominally neutral Switzerland, which still knows how to poke with the right finger when it counts, we have expected something with real teeth.
What do you think about Mason Storm’s “Saint or Sinner?” question? Leave your comment on Kunstmeile Basel’s controversial exhibit below, and pin the article for later!
