«To cruise the Med». Tourism and Migration in Banksy's Work

Abstract

This article explores Banksy’s art by highlighting the constant theming of the relationship between the migration crisis and tourism. Often, in fact, in the works of the most important street artist, the two themes are treated not separately, but as if they were figures of a bistable perception, and reversible in each other; an ironic mirror of the paradoxes of the globalized world. We will prove that there is an escalation in this sense, culminating in the Louise Michel, the purchase of a private yacht converted into a humanitarian ship. Banksy’s operation is valid not only as an open question and provocation, today, on the social function of art, but as an indication, for everyone, of a salvific way out from the inequality between those who have and those who have not, in order to migrate toward a common horizon.