Happy Birthday Mr. President – Marilyn

This multimedia sculpture responds to the visual canon of the 20th century, moving beyond mere nostalgia to offer a sharp reflection on contemporary political and social reality. The author deconstructs the famous May 1962 moment—when Marilyn Monroe sang a birthday greeting to President John F. Kennedy—through a synthesis of Warholian color theory, material abstraction, and an authentic audio track.

The artwork abandons figurative realism to focus on a powerful conceptual contrast driven by the sculpture‘s morphology. The vertical, deep magenta mass offers the viewer a shifting visual game: at first glance, it presents the easily readable pop-art sign of stylized lips and a kiss. Upon deeper imagination and a shift in perspective, however, the object reveals the contours of female genitalia. With this daring gesture, the artist materializes that which most fascinated and magnetized the most powerful men of the era within a patriarchal world. The female body becomes the ultimate object of desire, a trophy of power, and a hidden driver of high politics. Furthermore, the high mirror-shine of the surface functions as a conceptual trap—reflecting our own voyeuristic gaze back at us.

A crucial semantic counterpoint lies in the lower part of the sculpture. The sharply structured, crumpled gold base is directly derived from the most popular image in cinematic history—the white dress billowing over a New York subway grate. The artist radically transforms this symbol of erotic playfulness. The fabric of the skirt melts into deformed gold, referencing predatory materialism and money as the most influential value within the contemporary office of the US President.

The installation is accompanied by the original 1962 audio recording, which emanates directly from beneath the golden base. The sound rising from the depths of the object simulates the airflow from the symbolic ventilation shaft. This time, however, Marilyn’s fragile, chillingly intimate voice must pierce through heavy layers of gold and capital. „Happy Birthday, Mr. President“ thus stands as a fascinating and cautionary monument to history, where the pinnacle of political power, sex, and the oligarchic fetishism of boundless wealth merge into a single, mirror-polished object.