Banksy: Why is he painting wolves, monkeys, elephants and goats? All the hypotheses

Banksy strikes again. On August 5th it appeared a goat perched on a wall near Kew Bridge in Richmond, south west London. The 6th two elephantsi on the facade of a house in Edith Terrace in Chelsea. The 7th three monkeys swinging on the Brick Lane station bridge, to the east. The 8th a wolf howling from inside a satellite dish in Peckham, south of the city. All the artworks (it turned out) were claimed by Banksy himself through his Instagram account. Here is the latest post:

There is never a caption in the posts, but hundreds of thousands of people have liked and commented on the images, looking for a meaning: knowing that the artist from Bristol has always been engaged on various fronts, from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the war in Ukraine. First of all, many have started calling the series London Zoo, and they connected the series to the recent riots created by far-right protesters, who Banksy would compare to animals. For those who haven’t been following along: in several cities in the United Kingdom there have been violent demonstrations against immigration and against Muslims, with dozens of people arrested. It all started from yet another fake news that the 17-year-old boy who stabbed several people and killed three little girls in Southport, near Liverpool, was a Muslim migrant entered the country illegally. Some far-right politicians, including Nigel Farage, had insinuated that the police were withholding details of the murderer to cover up the inefficiency of the Labour government, in reality this is the practice for minors: in the end it was discovered that it was a boy born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents, not Muslim. After the acts of vandalism, anti-fascist demonstrations also followed: Banksy’s images would fit into this trend. Let us remember that in June he had created a migrant boat installation crowd-surfing the Glastonbury festival crowd. Former Home Secretary James Cleverly criticized the stunt, calling it a “trivialization” of small-boat crossings. Banksy dismissed the comments, also denouncing the fact that the rescue vessel he finances in the Mediterranean, the Mv Louise Michel, was docked in Sicily, seized by Italian authorities, who then released it after 20 days.

In this sense, in the goat’s post, the most popular comment is that of a fan who writes: «The surveillance camera is looking at the falling rocks, rather than what is causing them to fall. Goats are adapted to climbing narrow ledges, so they are not in danger, but the camera’s view doesn’t give the full picture. So I guess that refers to the need to understand that news needs context before forming an opinion”.

In the post elephants, instead, the most successful explanation is this: «It’s an allusion to the Creation of Adam and the saying “the elephant in the room,” even though there are two elephants. In the creation of Adam, the tension is that Adam is about to touch the finger of Godbut since he doesn’t touch it means that Adam/humans never really touch God. We just get close. Since the trunks almost touch, it’s the tension of turning to theelephant in the roomwithout ever getting to the bottom of it. And it’s interesting because it’s two elephants in separate rooms that are about to recognize each other. Like two coexisting, obvious issues that are about to converge in each other’s awareness, but that may not happen.” Others emphasize the girl passing under stencil with dogwho doesn’t notice anything, with headphones on, and doesn’t see the “elephant in the room”: racism, fascism, intolerance.

In the monkey post a fan writes, optimistically: «One animal, isolated and defenseless; two animals watching each other’s backs; three animals, overcoming difficulties together?», but immediately below other comments appear: «Humanity is not meant to last. Soon, they will be in charge», «They are watching us from above», as in a dystopian future (not so far away) from Planet of the Apes. Even in the last work, the wolf howling inside the parablesome note a reference to the media being overrun by wolves and fake news. Others note that Banksy posts photos in which there are people beside the work who are indifferent: “There is surely a sense that including people in all these photos is giving off a sense of ignorance to the wildlife around them?”, writes one fan.