Famed anonymous street artist Banksy has broken his six-month silence this morning, claiming credit via an Instagram post for a new black and white mural on a textured wall at yet another undisclosed location. In his signature fashion of responding to the existing environment, Banksy stenciled the silhouette of a lighthouse against a cream-colored wall, having it serve as the makeshift shadow of a sidewalk bollard that closely resembles a person.
Sprays of white paint emanate from the lighthouse’s lantern room, complementing the stenciled white text that reads “I WANT TO BE WHAT YOU SAW IN ME.”
It’s a rare return to infusing text in his compositions, since Banksy usually incorporates extant signage or graffiti when adding his touch rather than writing out his own phrases. That being said, this particular text takes the street artist’s already on-the-nose symbolism to another level.
It’s a bit jarring to see Banksy — whose entire schtick is anonymity, cheek, and flouting rules — both refer to himself in the first person in his own work and admit to a degree of self-consciousness. But even with all of that, the work comes across as overly sentimental for something so … empty? So obvious?
“I need to face myself,” “You saw the light in me,” “I’m not who you want me to be,” — these are just some of the universal, tired clichés that can be projected onto the paltry motif and its heavy-handed captioning.
The mural immediately brings to mind another street artist (perhaps a generous title) who is unfortunately prolific across areas surrounding New York City’s L train line — 7SoulsDeep. If you know, you know …. And for those who don’t, I want you to recall how nice it felt when the weather began warming up in April, but how difficult it was to bask in the sunlight and fresh air when all of that dastardly pollen was stuffing up your sinuses.
While I don’t suffer from hay fever, I do suffer at the hands of 7SoulsDeep, whose corny, fake deep, two-line tags are scrawled across construction sites, building façades, and sidewalk panels that are everywhere I turn as soon as it hits 42°F out.
No, we will not “fall in love this summer.” No, I don’t want to be “what you saw in me.” I’m “forever (d)evolving.”
If 7SoulsDeep is on the loverboy end of the cringe spectrum with a hint of “where my hug at?”, then Banksy has put himself close by with the adolescent preachiness of a free wallpaper app for the iPod Touch. He might be the artist who created the Walled Off Hotel in the Occupied West Bank. But Banksy is also the artist who shredded his own artwork after it sold for millions at an auction. I can only absorb the visual equivalent of someone doing a mic drop after vastly over-condensing critical discourse so many times before my retinas just stop receiving information.
Be that as it may, there will always be people who find meaning, comfort, visibility, and hope in this type of content:
This new Banksy mural is less of a low-hanging fruit in sociopolitical commentary, and it certainly invokes a more vulnerable and personal touch than usual, but it’s still another installment in what feels like a series of work stifled by both surveillance and media fatigue. Anyone remember that tree mural in Finsbury Park?
It could be a defection from the commercialism he simultaneously critiques and profits from, but I guess I’ve been made to expect more — either by technique or by message — from an artist whose entire practice, cheesy as it may be, is enmeshed in social and class consciousness.
I guess he’s right, though … he should want to be what I saw in him.