Banksy is a symbol, always. And now his work depicting a child knocking out Evil with a judo move becomes a stamp commemorating the first year of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The artist has amply demonstrated his closeness to the cause of the country being invaded by Putin’s military. Banksy, in fact, is the author of seven murals created last autumn in the places most affected by the bombings, between Kiev, the infamous suburb of Irpin and the city of Borodyanka.
In Ukraine, the anonymous English artist – who also financially supported the Legacy of War foundation to provide aid and medical assistance to the affected population, by auctioning off 50 screenprints – has entrusted the denunciation of the torment of war to highly valued images symbolic, as is the custom of his figurative language (we also think of the recent stance against violence against women, on Valentine’s Day, with the work that appeared in Margate): two children playing with an anti-tank obstacle, female athletes move among the damaged buildings in Gostomel near Antonov airport, a gymnast doing handstand on the rubble of Borodyanka, a woman in a dressing gown and curlers wearing a gas mask and holding a fire extinguisher. And, on the wall of a bomb-destroyed building (again in Borodyanka), a little judoka who knocks out an adult, variously interpreted as a wish for the Ukrainian state to take revenge on Russia or as a provocative reference to the suspension of Putin, expert judoka, from the International Judo Federation.