Edel Rodriguez's striking, at times controversial, illustrations of Donald Trump have graced the covers of major publications like Time and Der Spiegel -- and with the indictment of the former president, the artist is back at it.
The Cuban American's latest illustration set for the next edition of Time will run next week in the United States, but it's already been released and shared millions of times.
It features a stark black background on which a fingerprint spirals outwards from the howling mouth of the Republican mogul.
"He's caught in a storm of his own making," Rodriguez says of Trump, speaking from his Victorian home in a bucolic corner of New Jersey.
Anti-Trump demonstrators deployed the image at their rallies, but it triggered outrage from some politicians and opinion writers.
- Responsibility versus 'neutrality' -
Rodriguez also does not impose the duty of "neutrality" on himself.
"I understand that you have to maintain a certain neutrality," he says, sitting among a smattering of his illustrations, including on the covers of The New Yorker and the French review America.
"But you always have to ask yourself when is the neutrality going too far, and I felt that being neutral with Trump in 2016 was not the right thing to do, because I could see what was coming."
Rodriguez has depicted Trump like a meteor about to smash Earth, or a child sitting atop a missile with North Korea's Kim Jong Un.
Per Rodriguez, the January 6, 2021, storming of the US Capitol building by Trump supporters lent credence to the notion that danger was brewing and neutrality was moot.
"We were this close to a coup," he says.
Rodriguez's own story feeds his work: as a nine-year-old he fled Fidel Castro's Cuba with his parents.
In a comic book to be published this fall, he recounts his experience with "dictatorship" and the Mariel boat lift of 1980 in which he migrated to Florida, which saw a mass exodus of Cubans.
He says he draws inspiration from his family and Cuba but also the work of Picasso, Matisse, or Paul Klee.
In drawing Trump, he uses recurring visual codes, like orange skin, bright yellow hair, an open, yelling mouth, and a lack of eyes.
"These covers that I create don't normalize (him) and they show him as who he is," Rodriguez said.
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© Agence France-Presse
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