Banksy Draws Attention to Refugee Crisis With New Artwork and ‘Dismal Aid’

Banksy continues in his quest to harness and re-direct the spotlight of his celebrity towards the dire plight of the ongoing refugee crisis. This past Friday, the artist and provocateur revealed a new series of four immigrant-themed works on the walls in and around “the jungle” refugee camp in the port city of Calais, France.

Since September, Banksy and crew have been using the surplus materials from his dismantled Dismaland parody theme park to build “Dismal Aid,” emergency accommodations—including 12 dwellings, a community area, and a children’s playground—for thousands of migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, and Eritrea uprooted by the plagues of war and civil unrest.

The lynchpin piece of the new series is a spray paint depiction of the late Steve Jobs, tech guru and founder of Apple, with a black tattered satchel thrown over his shoulder and toting an original Mac computer in his opposite hand. The work is a no-apologies reference to Jobs’s own background as the son of a Syrian immigrant who came to the United States following the second World War.

In a rare accompanying statement provided to The New York Times via spokesperson, Banksy said, “We’re often led to believe migration is a drain on the country’s resources, but Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian migrant. Apple is the world’s most profitable company, it pays over $7 billion a year in taxes — and it only exists because they allowed in a young man from Homs.”

Banksy also scrawled the phrase “Maybe this whole situation will just sort itself out” on another wall in “the jungle” camp. Other pieces, elsewhere in the coastal French city, are an image of a young child with suitcase, gazing through a telescope with a menacing vulture perched on top of it, as well as a take-off of Théodore Géricault’s classic painting The Raft of the Medusa. The updated version is a depiction of a mangle of immigrants crowded onto a raft, reaching out in desperation towards an oblivious, passing luxury yacht. On Banksy’s website the image is accompanied by the damning phrase “We’re not all in the same boat.”