Banksy sprays in Ukraine and sends a clear signal in the war in Ukraine. Many of her graffiti have a political message – we’ve rounded up the 12 most blatant ones.
Bristol street artist Banksy is considered by many to be the pinnacle of contemporary art. He is known for his stencil-like graffiti, mostly in black and white, which he distributes worldwide. Banksy has now also left some of his works in Ukraine and, like these 11 artists, is making an impressive statement against the war in Ukraine.
It is not the first time that Banksy has intervened in crisis areas. A few years ago, you left graffiti in the Gaza Strip questioning the political situation there. Her messages are often political, as is Banksy’s disturbing art project, Dismaland. The anonymous artist has already spray-painted refugee ships, created a huge Brexit mural and issued a statement for wearing masks on the London Underground.
We’ve rounded up 12 of his graffiti that send a seriously badass political message.
1. Artist Banksy spray paints against Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine.
Banksy confirmed on Instagram that he is responsible for the large amount of graffiti that has appeared in Ukraine in recent days. On Saturday, November 12, she posted a photo on her Instagram channel of herself showing a girl doing a handstand against the gray wall of a destroyed house in Borodyanka. According to a journalist from the Ukrainian broadcaster “1+1”, the house had previously been destroyed by a Russian bomb.
For Ukrainians, Banksy’s motivations are a small but beautiful sign of hope in the war in Ukraine. The gymnast, a girl with a ribbon, the children on the swing and, above all, the child who knocks over an adult judoka (Putin practices judo). “We are stronger than David. They are weaker than Goliath,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry loudly commented on the work on Twitter German Press Agency (dpa).
2. Banksy’s sneezing mice on the London Underground.
Rat sneezes appeared on the London Underground in July 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic. “If you don’t mask, you don’t get,” the artist writes under the video of the action, which she shares on Instagram. You are taking a very clear position on wearing a mask during the pandemic, which is so important for risk groups.
Some of his rats hover above the London Underground wall in masked parachutes, others are holding a bottle of disinfectant. At the end of the video, an upbeat message: “I get lock, but I get up again” is written on the station wall and on the subway door. Below, two mice help each other scale a wall.
3. An entire rescue ship for refugees.
To the Lifeboat MV Louise Michel is street artist Banksy not just an ambassador through one of his graffiti, but also a donor. Sprinkler donated lifeboat which is supposed to carry refugees to mainland Europe. A video on Instagram reads: “Like most people who have made it into the art world, I bought a yacht to sail the Mediterranean. It’s a French military vessel that we’ve converted into a lifeboat. Because the authorities of the EU have a habit of scrupulously ignoring emergency calls from non-Europeans.” Banksy alludes to the dire conditions refugees in the Mediterranean are exposed to: Italian authorities have not allowed hundreds of refugees to disembark in Italy for days.
4. The boy in the pink smoke on the wall of a Venetian house.
In 2019, an image of a little boy standing in water up to his neck surfaced on Banksy’s Instagram channel. He is holding a torch with pink smoke and looks sad and resigned. From the Art Blog “Singulart” the graffiti says “refugee child with flashlight”. At the time, it was probably intended to create a stark contrast to another Biennale artwork: Swiss artist Christoph Büchel’s “Barca Nostra” refugee ship, on which more than 800 migrants died in 2015.
5. A small black girl spray paints a thick swastika.
Banksy is known for his liberal and tolerant worldview. With this graffiti from 2018, he is clearly positioning himself against National Socialism and racism. He sprayed a little black girl who sprayed pink paint on an existing swastika on a house wall. “This photo is so meaningful — a beautiful cover-up,” one user comments: in the Instagram post. [Anm. der Red.: Cover-Up bedeutet im Graffiti, dass ein Bild mit einem anderen Motiv übersprüht oder erweitert wird.]
6. No more capitalism!
The criticism of the capitalist system shines through again and again in Banksy’s art, in which profits are more important than human lives. It is also the case with this graffiti in Brooklyn (NY), in which a man in a suit and tie and a construction worker’s helmet chases a group of children, elderly people and women from a piece of land with a red arrow. The arrow resembles the price of a stock and also gives the artwork its unofficial name “Stock Exchange”. Banksy has officially dubbed it “Coney Island Adventure”
In Germany, too, artists criticize capitalism: with Christian Lindner’s “Sholl they drive a Porsche” posters, activists draw attention to the capitalist system.
7. Banksy defends an imprisoned Kurdish artist.
With this graffiti in New York, the message is clear: “In prison for almost three years for painting a picture,” writes Banksy under this Instagram post (see above). To do this she uses the hashtag #FREEzehradogan. She is defending Kurdish artist Zehra Doğan, who was convicted in 2017 of painting the destruction of a Turkish city — including a national flag waving over the scenery, she said spiegel. In a letter Banksy later shared on Instagram, her fellow artist thanked him for her mural.
8. Banksy takes a stand on Brexit.
This work of art carries enormous weight, in the truest sense of the word. In 2017, Banksy spray painted a construction worker with a typical Banksy look on a wall of a house in Dover (England). He hammers a star out of the European flag. While the stars on the flag don’t represent (as one might think) the founding states of the EU, this image has a clear message: Britons are walking away from the EU with Brexit, leaving a deep rift in their wake. In 2019, Banksy posted another graffiti image. “Oh. I had planned to take this photo in Dover on Brexit day like this [heruntergefallene Flagge] It would change. But apparently they repainted it. It does not matter. I think a big white flag says it just as well.
9. Children playing in the Gaza Strip.
Back in 2015, Banksy traveled to a war zone and sprayed political messages on destroyed homes and dangerous war scenes. In addition to this graffiti showing children on a watchtower chain carousel, murals of a large white cat with a pink ribbon and a soldier with his back to the viewer can also be found in the Gaza Strip (see below). Banksy calls these works “Justice for Gaza” and loudly publishes them Suddeutscher Zeitung (SZ) a video of this graffiti, which uses black humor to praise the Gaza Strip as a new travel destination.
10. Criticism of the refugee policy in Calais.
In 2015, Banksy once again took a concrete stand on Western refugee policy. She spray-painted an image of the late Apple founder Steve Jobs with a sack over his shoulder and a Macintosh computer in his hand on a concrete wall near a refugee camp in Calais, France. She explained, according to the art blog Singulart: “We are often led to believe that migration strains the country’s resources, but Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian migrant. Apple is the most profitable company in the world […] – and it exists only because a young man from Homs was brought in”.
11. Grafitti on the wall separating Palestine and Israel.
There is hardly a more expressive place than a wall separating two states from each other. This becomes clear with the Berlin Wall with its impressive East Side Gallery. But while it was only sprayed after its political function, this wall in the West Bank is different. Early in his career as an artist, Banksy spray painted a soldier and a little girl searching for weapons for him. A comical situation that couldn’t be further from reality. It feels out of place and at the same time incredibly appropriate – above all it inspires hope, just like the graffiti that Banksy athletes have left behind in Ukraine.
12. Probably Banksy’s most famous artwork: “The Flower Thrower”
This motif is so well known that it can be found on T-shirts, iPhone cases or in many living rooms around the world. It is also found in Bethlehem, more precisely in Beit Sahour. The “Flower Thrower” graffiti shows a hooded man throwing a bouquet of flowers instead of a bomb or a Molotov cocktail. Banksy sprayed the image in 2003 and immediately made it clear what he stands for politically: namely for peace instead of war. For hope instead of despair.
More on Banksy? On a Monday morning in 2014, Tagesschau tweeted that street artist Banksy had been arrested in the UK, but there was no sense.
