Nicolas Miranda lives with a toy dog that has the head of Javier Milei y a Chucky doll with the face of Benjamin Netanyahu somewhere in your house. “It’s a toy store,” acknowledges the Chilean-Argentine artist in conversation with Clarín.
This week, Miranda and his team intervened in the sculpture niche of Barack Obama, Donald Trump y Melania Trump of the Madrid Wax Museumadding caricatured representations of the Argentine president, the Israeli president and right-wing Spanish politicians Santiago Abascal (Vox leader)Jose Luis Martínez-Almeida (of the Popular Party) and Isabel Diaz Ayuso (president of the Popular Party in Madrid). He made them himself.
The news of his intervention Child’s Play (like the English title of the film Chucky: The evil doll, 1988) appeared in Spanish and Latin American media. The toy dog’s face had some X bounce.
-Did any politician write to you?
-Not until now.
The niche with the presidents of the United States intervened by Miranda and his team. Photo: Fiacha O’Donnell-And would you like it?
-I always talk to my team that scandal is not the objective. It is not the element that gives it validity. There are works that are super silent and powerful in all areas. Now, if something happens, it will happen. But it’s not the end.
-And what gives validity to the intervention? The photographic record?
-Of course.
-In other words, the intervention alone has the same level of importance as the photo taken by the person who is recording it.
—Do you know Tucumán Arde? Before that there was media art, and the founder was involved in that artistic manifestation (from ’68). They had McLuhan’s maxim that the medium is the message. More than 50 years have passed since then, so I’m not innovating anything.
A representation of Benjamin Netanyahu as the Chucky doll. Photo: Fiacha O’Donnell-What was the moment of the intervention like?
-As an intervention in itself, easy. Because it is a very calm, very relaxed museum. The guys who work there, in fact, have no responsibility for anything. I get them out of any kind of problem. Always when interventions are made, the place is checked first. And we went here several times. We saw the security cameras, we saw what the entrance was like, what the exit was like, how many guards there were. And once we realized it was simple, we gave it a try.
-What is the issue like in legal terms?
-We always work with lawyers. In principle it is not a crime. Let’s see, someone can be offended and they can file a complaint against you for whatever. Whether that takes place and reaches port is another matter. But strictly speaking, this is not a crime. This type of museum is made so that people, visitors, can take photos with the figures. We did the same, but with dolls.
-Aren’t you afraid of the repercussions?
-Not afraid. Let’s see, you can’t walk around with your ass tight in case they’re going to kick you. You can’t live like that. No fear, but stress yes, because it exhausts, it tires.
-And feel dizzy about what they can say about you?
-I think vertigo is different. There is the balance of the desire to touch the balls or the fear, and between them is vertigo, which will be the same. And without a doubt the desire to touch the balls weighs more on me.
The doll is in the artist’s house. Photo: Fiacha O’DonnellThe 44-year-old artist also made headlines in April 2023, when he executed his work “Parasitic strategies for survival in a cruel world” in front of the symbolic monument “El Oso y el Madroño”, in Madrid. A few meters away he planted towards him the figure of the king emeritus Juan Carlos I aiming a rifle.
To carry out this demonstration, he planned everything meticulously with his lawyer, part of the process that he considers “very entertaining.” specifically tried dodge los articles of the Constitution linked to “attacks against the crown” to do something “very bastard, very son of a bitch and very cynical at the same time” without being caught. Miranda wants to have everything under control, so that chance does not intervene in her works («impossible» undertaking, she says).
The moment he assumed «semiotics and visuality as language» his way of understanding art changed. That idea became the nodal stone of his vocation. He began studying arts at the ARCIS University in Chile when he was 17 years old and since then he has dedicated himself to street interventions. In the times when he does not do so, he works as a teacher.
Beyond the apparent success of his most recent intervention, Miranda recognizes that in Child’s Play by placing the toy dog and the rest of the politicians in the niche “he made a very serious mistake in terms of artistic operation”.
-Which?
-That Trump might like it.
