On November 21, 2023, a BBC reporter unearthed a 20-year-old interview through which the pseudonymous avenue artist Banksy disclosed his first identify (Robbie) for the primary time.
The British graffiti artist is known world wide for his use of stencils and for his work’s anti-establishment, anti-war themes. A protester tosses not a Molotov cocktail however a bouquet of flowers; a younger woman hugs a bomb as an alternative of a teddy bear; a copy of Monet’s lily pads is marred by garbage; the communist chief Che Guevara wears sun shades with greenback indicators over his eyes.
Many of those photos seem in “The Art of Banksy,” an unauthorized exhibit in downtown London tracing the artist’s profession. Notable is a sequence of advert supplies for The Walled Off Lodge, an really working lodging home within the Palestinian West Financial institution, which Banksy opened in 2017 to attract consideration to a bodily barrier constructed by the Israeli authorities. The wall, the resort’s web site declares, is “either a vital security measure or an instrument of apartheid,” relying on one’s perspective.
Given the conflict now raging between Israel and Hamas (and the worldwide protests which have adopted), Banksy’s political assertion appears simply as related as, and much more controversial than, ever.
