4 times Barack Obama likened to Jesus, the Messiah: 'This is the New Testament'

2. ‘Blessing’

According to Calisphere, which describes itself as a “gateway to digital collections from California’s great libraries, archives, and museums,” “Blessing” was a papier-mâché statue of then-presidential candidate Barack Obama displayed at a gallery in downtown Chicago, Illinois, in 2007. Created by David Cordero, an undergraduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago at the time, the statue depicts Obama in a white robe with a red shawl over his shirt and tie, and his head surrounded by a glowing halo. 

While the Obama campaign tried to distance itself from the sculpture and insisted that the then-U.S. senator “isn’t a fan of art that offends religious sensibilities,” Cordero denied that he was attempting to portray Obama as a God-like figure. Instead, he maintained the purpose of his art was to stress the importance of taking “caution in assigning all these inflated expectations on one individual, and expecting them to change something that many hands have shaped.”