ADVERTISEMENTBanksy’s back… and he / she / they may have crossed the Channel.
In an Instagram post on Thursday, Banksy unveiled his latest piece: a traffic bollard casting a shadow of a lighthouse with the words “I want to be what you saw in me” written over it.
The post was not accompanied by a caption or location.
Within ten hours of posting, the image had collected more than 500,000 likes.
While Banksy’s art regularly features satire or socio-political meaning, this new artwork has fans scratching their heads.
A critique of state surveillance, perhaps?
Or maybe a commentary about modern isolation?
Or is it something more personal, a universal feeling characterised by a tinge of melancholia?
Once again, Banksy shines in taking an ordinary object and turning it into something altogether more surprising – a simple yet potent reminder that what we dismiss in daily life as mundane can take on different meanings depending on how we decide to observe it… And not take the potentially extraordinary for granted.
We all need a lighthouse, a sense of guidance and hope. We also feel the need to be seen for who we are and aspire to be a better version of ourselves… And how easier would life be if we managed to perceive ourselves through the eyes of another, and perhaps catch the reflection of the (hopefully better) person others imagine us to be?
The new artwork has also left Banksy fans frantically speculating over its location.
Geoguessers on social media have speculated that the street art may be Marseille, in the south of France.
All we know is that the piece comes five months after “Mother and Child”, the December 2024 artwork that reinterpreted the religious iconography of the “Madonna and Child” in a contemporary light, and follows the elusive artist’s 2023 “Beastly London” campaign. The latter was a nine-day burst of animal-themed murals scattered across the city which featured elephants peeking from boarded windows in Chelsea and a hornyrhinoceros enthusiastically mounting a Nissan Micra in Walthamstow.
Elsewhere, Blink-182 frontman Mark Hoppus sold his Banksy painting for €5.2 million at a London auction ealier this year,
The record for a Banksy sale still stands at £18.6 million in 2021 (€27 million adjusted for inflation) for “Love is in the Bin”. After Banksy installed a shredder into the frame of his 2006 painting “Girl with Balloon” and programmed it to self-destruct after an auction in 2018, the half-shredded painting was renamed and sold for the astronomical sum.
