Graffiti artist Banksy has popped up once more, this time across the pond in Paris. His latest artwork is a slam against Parisian authorities using teargas to clear a camp of Syrian refugees. The installation comes as the first interactive piece by the artist and features the iconic Les Miserables poster child with tears streaming from her eyes as teargas billows towards her.
Mr. Banksy has always immersed himself in political commentary with most of his installations featuring statements about the current status of affairs across the globe. Since the influx of refugees from the east, Paris and many other major cities across the world have been inundated with expatriates hoping to escape political turmoil pervading their region.
The mural features a stenciled QR code which links viewers to a seven-minute long video of police raids on the "Jungle" refugee camps in Calais on January 5. In the video, riot police employ teargas, rubber bullets and other nonlethal forms of crowd control to suppress what has been reported as an undoubtedly civil confrontation by the refugees.
Back in Dec. 2015, another Banksy art piece was discovered in a refugee camp, this one depicting Steve Jobs as a refugee himself and calling on the notion that Jobs' father was, in fact, a Syrian migrant who settled in Wisconsin in the 1950s.
Last August, too, the British street artist conceived his largest installation to date entitled Dismaland, a work that touched upon "bemusement" and this disillusioned state of the world in regards to its handling of refugees.
With that work at a close, parts from the large-scale installation have been scrapped and donated to Calais to help build camp shelters for the homeless refugees.
Where there is political strife, so will there be Banksy to comment on the expanding hypocrisy behind the motives of national governments and its treatment of homeless refugees wading in the balance.
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