Banksy built a statue.
While most of us are shrinking our art to fit an instagram tile
Last week Banksy planted a statue of a businessman on a plinth in Pall Mall. Blindfolded by the flag he’s holding. By tomorrow it may be gone.
Everyone is debating the target. The audacity. The politics. The security. Who he’s skewering and why.
As an artist who loves to work with artists my mind went somewhere else entirely.
Imagine being so confident in your message that you build the thing, erect it in one of the most visible places in the country, and completely trust that it matters enough for people to stop and look.
So many of us are doing the opposite. Making the work smaller. Fitting it into the Instagram tile. Shrinking the vision to match the budget, the time, the energy left over after everyone else has been fed. Waiting until we’re more ready, more established, more certain it won’t be ignored or misunderstood.
Banksy built a statue.
Today I met someone. I won’t say more than that. But in the conversation, a familiar story surfaced - the one where the creative life gets quietly set aside because someone, somewhere, said it wasn’t viable. So the dry thing got done instead. Competently. Invisibly. For years.
And then one day, the door opened. And she walked through it.
These two things:
the statue going up in Pall Mall
that quietly told story
They. are the same story. The audacious version and the quiet version. Both saying: the work is worth making. Even if someone removes it tomorrow. Even if it took until now.
The second thing that struck me about Banksy, he’s anonymous (or well is he anymore?). So it becomes entirely about the work. Not about whether he’s young or old, cool or passé, what he looks like, where he’s from. The work stands alone and asks to be met on its own terms.
I am doing the opposite. I am putting myself completely in the frame. The nausea that rises with me in the morning. The squeaky daybed. The five suitcases. The camera that never went in a box. My name on the cover.
But I think we’re making the same argument from opposite ends.
He removes himself so the message can be seen clearly.
I put myself in so the message can be felt completely.
Both are acts of confidence. Both say: this matters. Look.
I am fifty years old in two months. I have been making my work smaller to fit into the life for long enough. I am building the thing. I am putting it where people will see it.
An Illustrated Life is coming. Prepare the plinth.
