Zoo? Banksy Adds Monkeys to His New Body of Animal Artworks

Banksy has Londoners—and the international art world—scratching their heads for a third day in a row. 

An artwork showing three monkeys swinging along an overpass on South London’s Brick Lane has appeared on the anonymous British artist’s Instagram, which is the way he typically claims new work. 

Animals are a mainstay in Banksy’s work, and monkeys have appeared repeatedly. For example, his 2009 Devolved Parliament satirizes the elite by showing England’s government replaced by chimpanzees and orangutans. And his Laugh Now stencil (2003) shows a monkey with a sandwich board bearing the words, “Laugh now but one day we’ll be in charge,” which also seems to bring humankind down a peg through a wry take on the theory of evolution.

But there’s no equally clear implication in the new work.

The monkey stencil does, however, follow two other animal-themed works in the same part of the city over as many days.

A woman and children view a mural depicting a goat by the street artist Bansky, on August 5, 2024 in the Richmond borough of London, England. Photo: Carl Court/Getty Images.

First, on Monday—having been silent since he Instagrammed about politicians’ cynical reaction to his latest immigration-themed work—he posted an image to Instagram of a mountain goat precariously perched high atop an exterior wall of a building. Across thousands of comments, fans put forth numerous interpretations, from those dealing with Palestine (the mountain gazelle is that land’s national animal), to those who saw it as a comment on the fragile state of British society, to others opining that it represented a scapegoat.

The latter interpretation suggested the work was a rapid response to racist riots across the U.K. after a deadly stabbing attack at a dance class. While information was not immediately released about the attacker because he is a minor, many speculated that the killer was an illegal immigrant or a Muslim. (He was ultimately revealed to be U.K.-born 17-year old Axel Rudakubana.) 

Artwork featuring two elephants by Banksy, on a residential building in the Chelsea neighbourhood of London, England. Photo: Carl Court/Getty Images.

On Tuesday, there appeared a work showing the silhouettes of two elephants on the side of a building, their trunks reaching toward each other but not touching. Commenters interpreted it as addressing “the elephant in the room” (Palestine, perhaps?) or riffing on Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam (c. 1512) from the Sistine Ceiling.

With the growing number of animals running wild in the city, cinema nerds might also think of filmmaker Terry Gilliam’s 1995 sci fi-thriller 12 Monkeys, in which the Army of the 12 Monkeys, a group of animal rights activists led by Brad Pitt, stages a protest by letting all the animals out of an urban zoo. In the film, set in a post-apocalyptic future, Bruce Willis plays a convict sent back in time to avert a global catastrophe, the cause of which scientists in the future have been unable to identify. 

And who knows? Maybe catastrophe is on the way in whatever will appear Thursday. After all, each day, Banksy adds another animal, and as Instagrammer Adrian White comments on the newest post, “I anticipate the four horsemen tomorrow.”

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