How art collective Remilia captured the MAGA movement

The MAGA social scene was defined on the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration by the Coronation Ball – perhaps the most exuberant celebration of the new ‘Golden Age’. The principal speaker was, unsurprisingly, Steve Bannon, the architect of Trump’s first victory and the voice of the neo-reactionary core of the President’s movement. More surprising perhaps though was the Ball’s principal sponsor, Remilia Corporation, a conceptual art movement. It was as if a Reform UK rally were sponsored by the Turner Prize.

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After Bannon’s speech, a representative of Remilia, an artist operating behind the pseudonym L.B. Dobis, stood at the podium to speak about internet art and to outline Remilia’s plans to remake the world one meme at a time. Founded in 2021 by Charlotte Fang (also a pseudonym – Fang is a man), Remilia emerged from an online group chat mostly made up of art school graduates and dropouts.

What began as an experiment in social media performance art rapidly evolved into an enterprise spanning NFTs, meme-coins, a health supplement brand, an influencer agency, a record label and a quarterly magazine of net-art criticism. What made this possible was Remilia’s NFT collection, Milady, now valued at $160 million. With the birth of Milady, Remilia’s army of posters had an instantly recognisable identity, blending the trends of our times: cutesy anime and digital outsider art – and money.

Anyone with the right aesthetic, a high tolerance for flippancy and a good meme game could join in. Remilia’s user base expanded beyond net artists and crypto developers, attracting fashion students, online Catholics, cosplayers, figures from New York’s Dimes Square scene and Estonian nationalists.