While the Day(s) of the Dead celebration in Mexico City is always a spectacular occasion to see amazing costumes and decorations, it also involves immense crowds that can be a bit overwhelming. For this reason, my wife and I decided that instead of going to Coyoacan or Reforma, where half the city congregates, we should go where nobody goes at this time: a traveling exhibition showing selected works of the British street artist Banksy.
A Bit of Background
For those who don't now, Banksy is the pseudonym of a famous UK based graffiti artist, or maybe even a group of artists, since his/her/their identity is not known. Banksy started out in the town of Bristol in the 1990's, first freehand spraying, then moving on to the more efficient stencil technique. The unique factor of Banksy's art is the provocative element it usually contains, pointing out such problem issues in our world as racism, capitalism, mass surveillance, war, and police violence.
What started out as true underground street-art of eyebrow raising images that were immediately removed by property owners and the authorities, Banksy has risen to such international fame where entire walls, and in fact a whole house, were sold of together with the art that was painted on them. Together with Banksy's fame also his art projects evolved and took on new forms, such as the Dismaland Bemusement Park art installation in 2015, or The Walled Off Hotel, an art project functioning as an actual hotel, next the West Bank wall, pointing out the humanitarian issues related to the middle east conflict.
Many of these pieces I had been familiar with, as they tend to circulate on social media, by people who share the same passion for spreading awareness about these issues. It was still a completely new experience walking through this collection, imagining that I came across these walls the same way I tend to discover the many murals I like to blog about.
Original Copies
At first I was a bit skeptical about the entire exhibit. How is it possible to show original pieces of the artist, if they were painted on public surfaces? Also, since some of his most famous works happen to be on the wall separating the West Bank from Israel, could they have removed those sections of a the wall, just to get them into this exhibition? Obviously not! Instead they are copies, replicas of the originals, though according to the staff some of the smaller pieces were indeed painted by Banksy, and donated to the exhibit by private collectors.
The artist, however, did supposedly not even authorize this entire exhibit, but then again, that would be hard to imagine anyway, since they are anonymous. Also, given the nature of the pieces, I don't really think Banksy actually minds having copies of their works exhibited around the world. But instead of going off in all directions speculating about what may or may not be behind this show, I just wanted to enjoy the pieces on their own, and share some of them here with you.
