Post by Commissioner on Apr 13, 2015 22:51:55 GMT
Has Banksy been at work in Montgomery, Alabama? A street art piece featuring Martin Luther King Jr. that appeared on the side an abandoned building on March 26, the 50th anniversary of the end of the Selma/Montgomery voting rights march lead by the civil rights leader (see Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Historic Selma/Montgomery March, in Pictures), has local residents wondering if the anonymous graffiti artist has been in town...
In this, supposedly Banksy’s mural in Montgomery, Martin Luther King Jr. is holding his unbuttoned shirt with both hands, while red X-mark is painted on his chests, like he is expecting execution. This artwork was named I Have a Dreamcatcher. It is believed that this artwork was made on the night of March 24 – symbolically, because on March 24 1965, the marchers of the Voting Rights Movement arrived from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama state capital, with desire to change and improve the voting rights of African-American citizens. This was the third march on this route that year, and Martin Luther King Jr. participated in it. The first two marches were marked by violence of the state troopers and police against unarmed marchers. The first march was remembered as Bloody Sunday. Later, that summer, the Voting Rights Act was passed.
Banksy’s admirers in Montgomery are not having second thoughts if this is really Banksy’s artwork – they firmly say that it is. It is his style, his type of political message, and after all, Banksy already was in Alabama: in 2008, Banksy painted a hanged member of Ku Klux Klan (KKK) on some abandoned petrol station in Birmingham, Alabama.
This painting was quickly vandalized and sprayed-over. However, some say that the claims that Montgomery painting was Banksy’s work of art are questionable. There were rumors that I Have a Dreamcatcher was made by Richard Cecil Hagans, or R.C, because this artist has similar style and lives in this area. However, R.C. did not want to comment on whether he is or he isn’t the author of the mural. Of course, we’ll probably never know if it really was Banksy, as – we don’t know who really Banksy is: is he a man, is he a woman, or is Banksy is a team of artists...
