Where is Melania Trump?

No, not the rarely seen First Lady, but the statue made in her likeness that watched over her nearby hometown, Sevnica, Slovenia.

The life-size bronze statue, 15 minutes outside Sevnica, disappeared from its perch this week. The theft was reported on Tuesday, the police said. But it’s not clear when, exactly, it was taken, Alenka Drenik, a spokesperson for the police, said by phone on Friday.

“Police are still assessing the theft, and an investigation is still ongoing,” Drenik added.

Residents of Sevnica have their suspicions. Some in the town of about 5,000 people in eastern Slovenia say it could have been an act of vandalism; others say it was probably melted down for cash. None of the people interviewed thought, however, that the statue’s disappearance had been in any way political.

“Melania is rarely seen in the spotlight or anywhere else, and even when she does do something, it’s so bizarre, so I don’t even want to think about her that much,” said Igor Pavkovic, who has lived in Sevnica all his life and recalled laughing when he first saw the statue.

The expressionless sculpture, its arm raised in a tight wave, never quite captured the heart of Sevnica’s residents. Originally made of wood, it was hacked from a linden tree and unveiled in 2019 by an artist who used a chain saw to create a very, very rough likeness of the First Lady.

Painted powder blue to reflect the cashmere dress and gloves that she wore to her husband’s first inauguration, in 2017, the wood statue stood 9 feet tall. But it was derided as resembling a scarecrow or a Smurf. Anonymous arsonists set the statue on fire July 4, 2020.

A bronze replacement was erected later that year. Now, only the statue’s heavy cubist feet, hacked off at the ankles, remain on the tree trunk that had served as the statue’s plinth.

It had stood in a lonely field, far away from the municipal apartment block where Melania Trump grew up and the school she attended. The privately owned field overlooks the Sava river and a verdant valley, but only runners and cyclists would have regularly crossed paths with the statue.

Both the wood and metal iterations had been commissioned by an American artist, Brad Downey, who worked with local artisans to create the sculptures. Downey said at the time that he saw it as an interrogation of President Donald Trump’s harsh stance on immigration.

“The idea to commission the first monument to Melania has some cheekiness to it, but I wanted to do a serious investigation there,” Downey said.

Although no one has claimed responsibility for the statue’s disappearance, it vanished at a time when public dissatisfaction with Donald Trump’s second-term policies have been expressed globally through vandalism of vehicles made by Tesla, an electric car company owned by Elon Musk, Trump’s adviser. Satirical advertisements mocking both men have also popped up around London in recent weeks.

Few in Sevnica said they would miss the statue. “I only saw it in pictures, and I thought it was very unesthetic,” said Nena Bedek, an art teacher who said she had gone to school with Melania Trump.

New York Times News Service