Flipping tables: An interview with The Suited Racer about HOLY BABBLE! NYC

THE HOLY BABBLE! NYC installed in a New York gallery space. Image courtesy of the artist.

BY EMMA CIESLIK May 2nd, 2026

This past April 19th, a new conceptual art installation exploring Trumpism as a system of belief opened at a gallery in New York’s Lower East Side. Titled HOLY BABBLE!, the installation transformed the gallery into a chapel with a holy water bowl full of Cheetos, wooden pews, stained glass imagery of Trump alongside a burning Capitol building, and a central altar. It also features a 250-page belief system written like a Bible that is organized into books of prophecy, parables, genealogies, and apocryphia of and surrounding Trumpism. The books are available for purchase through a vending machine next to the altar for $45.47, a nod to Trump’s two presidencies. 

As The Suited Racer, the New York-based conceptual artist behind the installation, explained, “the transactional gesture is integral to the world. By collapsing the boundary between the sacred and the commercial, HOLY BABBLE! NYC positions consumption as a form of participation, underscoring the intersection of belief, identity, and consumer behavior within contemporary political culture.” 

After the exhibition opened last week, I interviewed the Suited Racer about the meaning of visualizing Trumpism as a belief system separate from Christianity and the power of art to combat fascism and the rise of Christian nationalism. 

Emma Cieslik: Would you mind introducing yourself however you feel comfortable? 

The Suited Racer: I go by the Suited Racer. My art is about acceptance and equal rights. A lot of people perceive it to be protest pieces, but in reality, it only protests when something or somebody is imposing on those two key principles. So it’s not really about protesting. It’s just about acceptance and equal rights. The Holy Babbel is a subset of the art piece that is the Suited Racer. The Suited Racer is an art project that began in 2015 when Trump was running for the first time. 

I thought to myself, what would happen if he wins. I didn’t think it was going to happen, but I thought it was a fun thing to explore at the time. Fun only as an allusion. What would happen if someone of his demeanor and his character and his ideas actually became the most powerful person on the planet? 

So I imagine this world in the future where we were under an authoritarian, very nationalist government, and I came up with this entire world, and in that future, there is this character named the Suited Racer which uses art to combat this oppressive regime. I changed the name of the GOP to the Neonationalist Freedom Party. At that time, nationalism sounded super crass and crazy but now they freely and proudly call themselves nationalists. We’re only 10 years old, and a lot of the stuff that was originally written in that comic book was the first iteration of this art project. 

THE HOLY BABBLE! NYC installed in a New York gallery space. Image courtesy of the artist. 

Ciesilk: Some of the protests based here in Washington, DC have focused on Trump’s gaudy renovations of the White House and some on Trump’s connections to Epstein. What was the importance of calling out Christian nationalism?

Suited Racer: I think attacking Trump is inefficient because we are attacking a person, and it’s really the ideas behind them. I’m not attacking Christianity. From a religious standpoint, if you want to see it from a belief standpoint, I’m flipping tables, which is what Jesus did when he went to the temple and he saw what it had become. From my perspective, that’s what I’m doing. I’m addressing the people, instead of addressing Trump. 

I’m addressing the people: look, I understand you have a relationship with this book. This is the real Bible, and you read it maybe on the daily, and you are certainly used to reading Jesus’s words with a certain cadence. The contrast between that and how Trump speaks is such a wide gap. It’s very difficult to read this and go, that’s a great idea. You read your Bible, and it says, “love thy neighbor as you would love yourself.” And then when you read the BABBLE, which is not meant to be a Bible, it says, "when thou are anointed with fame, everything is permissible. You may grab them by their secret flesh.”

The idea that when you’re famous, do whatever you want is one of his ideas. I’m attacking those ideas, and when you put them through the looking lens of people that want to do good, that have been co-opted, hopefully it just kind of communicates: you’ve been led astray. 

Stations of the T, on display as part of the HOLY BABBLE! NYC. Image courtesy of the artist.

Stations of the T, on display as part of the HOLY BABBLE! NYC. Image courtesy of the artist.

Ciesilk: You explore Trumpism as its own religion, separate from Christianity. What shape does that take in the exhibition?

Suited Racer: Yes, there’s a lot of people out there where everything is a conspiracy, everything is a psyop. I think it loses the nuance of just how things shape up. When you look at people that are living in faith, they’re people that want to do good for the most part. They believe they’re doing good, and they trust other people. They trust their leaders in the church. They trust their pastors, and when they see somebody like Donald Trump saying these things, they trust. 

A lot of the art publications don’t want to touch it. They think it’s too political, and are scared of any kind of repercussions. I understand that fear, but that’s why I make art that can be collected by everyone, and not just the people that can buy it, but it’s very important to understand. These are the times we have to speak out the most. These are the times that we have to push against the most. This is art’s job. Our job is to be the time capsule so that 50 years down the road, when they look back on all of this and they say, “Americans, they were all crazy.”

And they’ll go, “well, did you see that thing that’s called the HOLY BABBLE?" It’s so important to present this time in a way that shows that we weren’t all in cahoots, that we weren’t all on this boat. I want it on record that it’s not just me, there were a lot of us that kept fighting for our American Constitution and our life and our point of view and our freedoms. 

Cieslik: You point out that this exhibition is free. Can people take pieces of it home with them? I know that’s been an element of A Throne For a King where people could take away pieces of the toilet paper with the artist collective Secret Handshake’s logo on it. 

Suited Racer: Yes, obviously, all this stuff does cost money, but how do we make this accessible for everyone? The art itself is the chapel, so when you are in the chapel, you are experiencing what the purest form of the HOLY BABBLE is. What I was able to do, which has always been a riddle for artists, because the people that are the biggest fans of the artists’ work normally can’t really afford to have that artwork in their home--so what the Holy Babel does is present itself in its fullest form as if was an actual Trump chapel. So the scriptural text is available for purchase from a vending machine, so you can walk up there with your Apple Pay. 

You can buy one of the signed-in-numbered editions of the Holy Babels scripture. There’s only 4,547 so 4547, because of his presidential terms, and they're each $45.47, which is as attainable as I could possibly make, uh… Part of the art, um… So, when you go to the Holy Babel, you get to experience the art, and if you want to participate in the art, you can participate in the act of purchasing. So you get to walk away with an object and an artifact. 

We also have these prayer cards that I made, um, and they have imagery of Donald Trump and imagery of, like, Pam Bondi, RFK. So RFK is on his knees and he's being kind of force-fed fried chicken. And then there's a prayer in the back. They're all kind of tongue in cheek, but it's like a prayer of the alternative self. The prayer reads: “how do I ignore all of the things I hold to be true, just so that I can do the one thing that this guy's gonna give me?”

That's my interpretation of what RFK is doing. His prayer would be, give me the strength to ignore all the things that I know to be true, just so I can get this one thing done. How do I tolerate being around all these bad ideas? Only because I want this one idea that I believe in to go through. So they all kind of come from that point. Those are also 4547, and there's only 454.7 of each. It’s a way to kind of participate in this chapel, the way that you would in a real chapel.

Visitors to the HOLY BABBLE! NYC purchase the Suited Racer's Trumpian Bible. Image courtesy of the artist.

A close up view of the HOLY BABBLE, the Suited Racer's Trumpian Bible. Image courtesy of the artist.

Cieslik: How is art an ideal way to fight the rise of Christian fascism? And I ask because, especially in New York City, there are likely many and not all, but many like-minded people who believe in the mission of what you're sharing. What is the goal in a broader sense of fighting the belief that Trumpism as a religion is acceptable?

Suited Racer: Well, I think the first thing is to really separate Christianity from fascism and Christian from Trumpism because the more they mix together, the harder it is to pull them apart. So when we say Christian fascism, what we're really speaking about is how we separate fascism from co-opting Christianity? How do we separate the fascism from using Christianity for its particular purposes, and the answer to that is surprisingly old. It is found in the philosophy of what it means to be an American, which is the separation of church and state. 

We don’t want a theocracy in this country for a very good reason. Now, not wanting a theocracy doesn't mean that I am renouncing Christianity, or I am denouncing Christianity. It is what it means to be an American, and it is probably the best path forward for Christianity. Jesus did not go and talk to Caesar about how to rule or who was ruling. He was almost unbothered by Caesar's existence, because he wasn't speaking to power.

He was speaking to people. So I think one of the things that is super hyper important for us as we continue to untangle this entanglement that has happened with Christianity and Trumpism is to start saying it is not Christianity, right? We have this really big uphill battle to understand that it’s co-opting people in the Christian faith who have found themselves roped into this for lack of a better word.

The installation will be on view until May 3rd, 2026.