Amid worldwide protests against systemic racism and police brutality, Banksy has shared a new anti-racism artwork, alongside a statement that draws attention to the need for white solidarity.
The painting depicts a memorial scene for an anonymous victim, in which a lit candle is setting fire to a US flag.
The accompanying statement sees the graffiti artist acknowledge his own privilege and complicity, as a white person, in a system that is failing people of colour. “At first I thought I should just shut up and listen to black people about this issue,” he writes. “But why would I do that? It’s not their problem. It’s mine.”
“People of colour are being failed by the system. The white system. Like a broken pipe flooding the apartment of the people living downstairs. This faulty system is making their life a misery, but it’s not their job to fix it. They can’t – no-one will let them in the apartment upstairs.”
“This is a white problem. And if white people don’t fix it, someone will have to come upstairs and kick the door in.”
Black Lives Matter protests have been ignited in all 50 US states, also spreading to cities across the world, following the killing of an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, in police custody May 25.
Activists have also remembered other Black victims of police violence during the demonstrations, including Breonna Taylor, who was killed in her home in March, and Tony McDade, a trans man fatally shot just two days after Floyd’s death.
Other street artists have commemorated these victims, and urged people to remember their names, in murals across the world.
View Dazed’s running list of anti-racism resources for more artworks, films, books, and ways to directly support the movement.