The British street artist Banksy has weighed in on the Brexit debate, with an enormous artwork appearing at Dover, one of the main British ferry ports, the traditional U.K. gateway to Europe, showing a construction worker chipping away at a star on the EU flag.
Banksy is well known for his political street art.
The Guardian reports that the mural has been confirmed as genuine by Banksy’s representatives and represents the reclusive artist’s first public comment on the Brexit vote last year.
ADVERTISEMENT
The artwork emerged over the weekend on the Castle Amusements building near the Dover ferry terminal. Before the construction of an undersea rail tunnel, ferries were the only means of passenger travel between the U.K. and mainland Europe.
The mural depicts the worker chiseling away at one of the gold stars of the European flag, which, according to the EU website, “stand for the ideals of unity, solidarity, and harmony among the peoples of Europe.”
The Dover artwork is just a few miles across the sea from Calais, where a Banksy mural appeared at a refugee camp in 2015, showing Apple founder Steve Jobs, whose biological father was a Syrian immigrant.
The mural is the first new work to appear since it was claimed that “Banksy” is actually a cover name for a group of up to four people working as a collective.
The “multiple Banksys” idea—provided by a British writer turned Banksy-detective—provides a simple explanation for how a graffiti artist who has daubed tens of thousands of images on walls around the world and even built mock theme parks has managed to avoid identification by mainstream media and hipster blogs.
The Daily Beast revealed that one of the suspected ‘Banksys’ was British grafitti artist James Ame, famed for his prolific use of a mini Lego figure in his street stencil works, and known in consequence as ‘The Lego Guy’.
In a 2007 interview with The New Yorker, Banksy said, “I used to want to save the world, but now I’m not sure I like it enough.”
