Because everything the “illustrious” and “elusive” Banksy does–especially when he does it in New York–is met with orgiastic fanfare in terms of those who don’t really appreciate art clamoring to take a photo of his work for their Instagram (yours truly included), it’s especially important that the subject Banksy is portraying is clear to everyone. But when the “everyone” in question is rather tunnel visioned in terms of news events Americans, can Banksy really be blamed for the current double take people are doing when they pass the mural of Zehra Doğan to confirm that it is not, in fact, Selena Gomez?–recently under fire herself for hashtagging for a cause after previously declaring its uselessness.
Located in what is known as prime real estate on Houston Street near the Bowery, the seventy-foot long scene is punctuated by roughly three hundred tally marks alluding to the amount of time she’s served in prison already. That the mural clearly reads “Free Zehra Doğan” is of no matter, apparently. Maybe unwitting takers in of the spectacle can’t be blamed, are mere victims of a city and a culture that is so celebrity-obsessed, they can’t help but see a famous face in everything. Doğan’s face, to them, is not as famous as Gomez’s, the subject of another graffiti motif you can still find throughout the city via the Saint Peter’s cross paired with the phrase “Selena Gomez Witch Gang.” It’s very stupid, and not in the least political. No, not like Banksy’s depiction of Doğan (who, yes, in certain angles could pass as a relation of Gomez’s), referencing her three year prison sentence for creating a watercolor painting–not even taking a photo, but making a fucking painting, which should be, if anything, rewarded–of the primarily populated with Kurds city of Nusaybin. Being that the city was decimated during the battle between the Turkish army and contending Kurds, certain people weren’t happy about the unfavorable implications of the Turkish army’s purge, highlighted with bright red flags blatantly throwing shade at the destruction they caused to Nusaybin and the Kurds that lived in it. Naturally, this is why the Turkish government saw fit to jail her, claiming her rendering of the fighting was slanted propaganda. Self-conscious about your behavior much?
Usually a writer for a feminist news outlet called JINHA when she’s not being imprisoned for her art, Doğan commented of her sentence, which was in part “permitted” to be carried forth as a result of JINHA being an “illegal” organization, “I was given [a prison sentence of] two years and ten months only because I painted Turkish flags on destroyed buildings. However, [the Turkish government] caused this. I only painted it.” For Americans, this is all a bit out of their wheelhouse, as they have a tendency to complain about even the slightest inconvenience or inability to engage in the free speech rights that go with the territory of freedom of the press. Yet as free as the press is, Americans persist in their negligent knowledge overall (should you ask the average man on the street, if you will) and of Doğan’s current plight, therefore the automatic assumption that Banksy’s mural is instead a rather random homage to Gomez.
Or was this Banksy’s plan all along?–his secret weapon for raising awareness amongst ignorant Americans who would feel compelled to look up whether or not their suspicions of it being Selena Gomez were true, so convinced of the need to imbue the image with false and incongruous symbolism, like how it’s supposed to represent her undying devotion to Justin Bieber. Very incongruous, because we all know white man’s dick definitely isn’t worth pining over.
