A Palestinian boy looks at one of six new images painted by British street artist Banksy as part of a Christmas exhibition in the West Bank town of Bethlehem Dec. 2, 2007. (Credit: Ammar Awad/ Reuters|)
Almost unnoticed amid the turmoil shaking the region and the world, the extensive investigation published by Reuters on March 13 is nonetheless worth attention. Beneath the noise of bombs and the flood of information, it tackles one of contemporary art's most persistent mysteries: Banksy’s identity. Following a lead opened in a Ukrainian village devastated by war, journalists Simon Gardner, James Pearson, and Blake Morrison reconstruct, piece by piece, the path of an artist who has made his anonymity not just into protection, but a language of its own.It all begins in Horenka, near Kyiv, at the end of 2022. In the ruins of a bombed building, two masked men stencil an absurd scene: a bearded man in a bathtub, scrubbing his own back amid the rubble. The visual signature is unmistakable – Banksy has been here. But how? And with whom?...
Almost unnoticed amid the turmoil shaking the region and the world, the extensive investigation published by Reuters on March 13 is nonetheless worth attention. Beneath the noise of bombs and the flood of information, it tackles one of contemporary art's most persistent mysteries: Banksy’s identity. Following a lead opened in a Ukrainian village devastated by war, journalists Simon Gardner, James Pearson, and Blake Morrison reconstruct, piece by piece, the path of an artist who has made his anonymity not just into protection, but a language of its own.It all begins in Horenka, near Kyiv, at the end of 2022. In the ruins of a bombed building, two masked men stencil an absurd scene: a bearded man in a bathtub, scrubbing his own back amid the rubble. The visual signature is unmistakable – Banksy has been here. But how? And with...
