The street artist Banksy has posted a new two-minute video on YouTube, below, that shows a series of new works made in Gaza and aims to highlight the conditions that the area’s 1.8m Palestinians are living in.
The works, sprayed on bomb-damaged buildings and walls, include an image of children using an Israeli watchtower as a chair carousel swing and a cutesy cat surrounded by rubble that appears to be playing with a ball of mangled metal.
Banksy’s website says of the project: “Gaza is often described as ‘the world’s largest open air prison’ because no-one is allowed to enter or leave. But that seems a bit unfair to prisons – they don’t have their electricity and drinking water cut off randomly almost every day.”
The New York website Hyperallergic reports that images first appeared via a new Banksy Instagram account which it says has been confirmed as genuine by Banksy’s publicist.
Commenting on his website about the kitten image, he said: “A local man came up and said ‘Please – what does this mean?’ I explained I wanted to highlight the destruction in Gaza by posting photos on my website – but on the internet people only look at pictures of kittens.”
