Earlier this week, eight new murals popped up across Paris that caught the attention of the public. As reported by Mashable and confirmed on his Instagram, the murals were indeed the work of Banksy.
The murals appear in bustling corners of Paris including the Centre Pompidou and on the bank of the Seine across from the Eiffel Tower, as well as spots in the city marked by tragedy, like at The Bataclan and near a soup kitchen that assists those in need. These locations are not accidental as Banksy’s new set of work seeks to criticise the harmful effects of capitalism (as the BBC interprets it), the rising tide of racial injustice and violence, and even remind us with certain murals that it has been over 50 years since the May 1968 protests in Paris and in a way, it seems not much of what those protesters fought for has been achieved.
Some of the murals are more explicit in exposing the current social and political imbalances, especially in relation to their location. One mural, painted outside the Sorbonne, shows a corporate man holding a bone out to a dog whose leg has been amputated but looks up at the man needily. Another mural, which depicts a young black girl attempting to paint over a Nazi swastika with a beautiful pink design as she looks very upset, appeared on a wall at the Porte de la Chapelle which functions as a migrant soup kitchen. One of the most haunting murals is the one on a door of The Bataclan, which depicts a ghostly figure in mourning with its head hung low — a tribute to the 89 people who were killed there in a terrorist attack in 2015.
Banksy hasn't given any kind of statement about why he’s choosing these topics, why he put up these murals now, or why he chose Paris over another city. Then again, he doesn’t need to explain himself because these murals do all of the necessary explaining just fine.
