Right now, we all feel it. That urge to switch off the news and stick our heads in the sand. Cocoon ourselves in the bubble of our lives and spend money on things we think might make us feel better. Lean into the distractions of the modern world.
Banksy won’t allow it. Instantly recognizable, his art forces us to confront injustice and the truths we sometimes prefer to ignore. Truths about war, consumerism, the environment, animal cruelty and greed. Often presented with an element of surprise and always with a wry sense of humour.
But it’s irony that comes through the most at The Mystery of Banksy exhibition, currently housed at Lausanne’s Beaulieu. Banksy is a global household name yet has managed, no doubt with enormous effort, to stay anonymous. He is the highest bidding contemporary artist of our time and still, his work stays faithful to the ethos of street art, free and for the masses. His pieces are ephemeral, quick to be defaced, stolen or even modified by a stunt of his own hand. But they keep living through unofficial replicas and by going viral online.
The exhibition has been touring the world and is supposedly unauthorised too. Over 200 works are on display which include original prints, sculptures and reproductions of installations such as Barely Legal, where he famously painted a live elephant to match the wallpaper in a room. There are also recreations of the murals he made in Ukraine, using damage left by Russian airstrikes as his canvas, and those on the barrier that separates the West Bank from Israel. A staff member told me ten artists came to Beaulieu with stencils to copy these, whom they were not allowed to photograph. Does this mean the exhibition was in fact authorised by the man himself, and that there might be a whole team behind him? A mystery indeed.
Whilst I loved seeing some of his most famous pieces in real size, such as Show me the Monet and Kissing Coppers, my favourites were the prints I wasn’t familiar with. Banksy first sprayed the streets of Bristol in the 1990s and his body of work is enormous. I also enjoyed how immersive the exhibition was, taking me to his “theme-park un-suitable for children” called Dismaland, the Tube he defaced during COVID in the London Underground and the lobby of his Walled-Off Hotel in Bethlehem, advertised as having “the worst view in the world.”
There is no separation between his art and his activism, for Banksy they are the same. His work scorns authority and mocks the establishment. He actively campaigns for the plight of refugees, funding his own rescue boat in the Mediterranean named after the anarchist Louise Michel. By removing the person behind his work, masking a personality, we are left only to consider the pieces themselves and the strong stances they take.
Since he’s been active over the past thirty years, we’ve reached a point where power, celebrity and personality are evermore fused. His rejection of status and fame is a defiance when the whole world feels like a stage. It’s the power that allows him to express himself freely. His work urges you to stay alert and call out injustice; it’s the bravest thing you can do.
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The Mystery of Banksy- A Genius Mind is at Beaulieu until the 29 June 2025. You can buy tickets here.
Beaulieu SA
Avenue des Bergières 10
1004 Lausanne
Vanessa Tracey is a contributing writer for The Lausanne Guide. You can also find her on Substack.
