Donald Trump, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Albert Einstein draw tourists to Bulgarian village

Weeks before former President Donald J. Trump will face Vice President Kamala Harris in a live TV debate, his portrait has appeared on the walls of a Bulgarian village. Each summer for the past decade, artists have gathered in the sleepy village of Staro Zhelezare, to decorate walls and fences with graffiti with the faces of current and past world leaders from the political and cultural scene. Standing by a portrait of Marilyn Monroe, Ventsislav Piriankov, artist and founder of Staro Zhelezare art festival ,explains how his paintings relate to the modern world. “More or less we fit into the framework of an eternal and at the same time reporting art, which always reflects on the events of political, public, social, sports, cultural life both from around the world and in Bulgaria,” he says. The annual art project is organized by the Polish-Bulgarian artistic family – Ventsislav Piriankov as well as his sister Katarzyna. They teach at an art school in the Polish city of Poznan and have been regularly inviting their students to Bulgaria to create an outdoor art gallery with Banksy-style graffiti. Ventsislav’s grandfather and grandmother lived in the house, which today has been turned into an art...