Street art
Banksy leaves Venice momentarily
Appeared in 2019, the stencil “The Migrant Child”, threatened by the waters of Venice, is the subject of a restoration. Will he find his place?
“The Migrant Child” is one of Banksy’s works on the theme of migration. The British artist produced it in 2019 in Venice.
keystone
- The restaurateurs began to save the Venetian work of Banksy threatened by humidity.
- The delicate takeoff of the stencil took place over a full night.
- The IFIS bank, owner of the building where the work was painted, undertakes to maintain it accessible to the public.
Even dangerously pale, even attacked by the humidity and the waves of vaporettos – and worse still by the high waters of Venice – “the migrant child” deposited on the channel six years ago by Banksy will not disappear. Word of owner of the Palazzo San Pants, in the district of Santa Croce: not everyone has a work of the most rated street artist of the moment … downstairs!
Banca Ifis, a Venetian by birth and therefore in the soul, launched the renovation work of mural painting representing a young migrant, a distress with hand. And unlike Banksy who works quickly – it is the law of bitumen, the condition not to be taken, nor unmask – the renovation site will take its time.
We also learn that the first works started in June with a phase of cleaning, dusting and consolidation of the work already eroded on 30% of its surface. Before the takeoff operation which took place on the night of Wednesday July 23 to Thursday July 24. To achieve this, a decision was taken to take the stencil with a part of the wall on which the artist painted it.
«The Migrant Child» est au sec
Now dry, “The Migrant Child” is sheltered in a laboratory under the eye of a restaurateur who knows the art and the way of Banksy for having contributed to the preservation of “Aachoo !!”, the little lady who sneezes on a facade of Bristol. Other measures will be taken to give it back its color and vigor, as if to consolidate its support.
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But the rescue will not be total, the too damaged part would have required being completely repainted! And … the art of the street, ephemeral in its genes as in its mind, does not ask for so much. The artist’s rating which is worth millions in sales rooms – 21.8 million euros for the resale of “Girl with Balloon” after his self -destruction – could have perverted the operation. The popularity of the darling of the public, even more, forcing to do too much.
Salt and waters attacked the Banksy wall fresco damaged on approximately 30% of its surface.
AFP
The patrons played the card of reason, knowing the subject of the tense: in 2023, the Italian government had given up restoration, mired in the controversy, in the face of those who estimated that only the artist could say if he had to save his work. Him? This mysterious which always falls at stain with its stencils as in this “migrant child”, frail creature in front of the elements, symbol of all those who play their lives in the Mediterranean, we obviously never heard it on the subject. Speaking is not in his religion!
On the other hand, Banksy, the artist who disguises himself as a Sunday painter to sell Pochades for a handful of dollars in New York or as a traveling merchant of odds and ends during a Biennale de Art Contemporain in Venice, is playful enough to have fun with this ambiguity.
And maybe even appreciate what is-also-a brand of recognition? It remains to be seen whether “The Migrant Child” will regain its original location … If the decision is not yet taken, “wall painting will not be, promises Banca Ifis, exposed in a closed and paid place.”
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