WAS IT BANSKY YET AGAIN IN THE STREETS?

Creative and anonymous are the best words to describe Bansky; an England-based street artist, vandal, political activist and film director. Bansky is arguably the most known and controversial street artist in the world. While other artists use canvases to work on their paintings, Bansky uses the street walls for his graffiti works; a completely unique of having a little color on the walls of your street. His street art often combines dark humor with graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique. Bansky often uses young children as his subjects and addresses refugee crisis in his works.

Bansky is a well-known yet a mystery in the graffiti world, he has never revealed his identity with speculations that he hides it because of the illegal nature of his graffiti.

The mysterious British artist may once again be behind a new mural in the city. The subject of the mural is a migrant child wearing a life jacket while holding a neon pink flare calling for rescuers. The painting leads to the speculation that the graffiti artist paid visit on the Venice Biennale occasion that opened to the public the past weekend.

The Venice mural which was spotted on the island of Dorsoduro by the eagle-eyed artist and collector Lapo Simeoni, is thought to have been painted at the end of last week, during the Biennial’s Private viewing of paintings before the public exhibition. The work bears all the characteristics of Bansky but he is yet to claim it as his own and yet to appear in his website or instagram account.

It could be that the work belongs to Bansky as he has frequently addressed the refugee crisis in his works in the past. For example, in 2015, he stenciled an image of the late Steve Jobs, the Apple Founder, with a black bin bag thrown over one shoulder and an original Apple computer in his hand, in the Calais refugee camp known as “the Jungle.”

In a statement accompanying the work, Bansky said: “We’re often led to believe migration is a drain on the country’s resources but Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian migrant. Apple is the world’s most profitable company, paying over $7bn a year in taxes- and it only exists because they allowed in a young man from Homs.”

Issues of migration and immigration are prevalent at this year’s Venice Biennale entitled “May You Live In Interesting Times, a nod its curator Ralph Rugoff says to the “condition of late capitalism, lurching from crisis to crisis.”

The question still remains, was it Bansky who drew the graffiti? Will he come out and own the work if it is indeed his?