With an homage to doctors and nurses engaged in the fight against Coronavirus, Banksy is back with a new work that we can admire directly on his Instagram profile. It is a one square metre drawing that Banksy has donated to Southampton General Hospital, England, where it will remain on display until the autumn, when it will be auctioned and the proceeds will go to charity for the British National Health Service.
Banksy: a new work dedicated to doctors and nurses
"Game Changer", this is the title of the new work, talks about a game, but a game whose rules have changed. The work shows a child playing with a nurse's puppet, but, just like a superhero, with a cloak and an arm raised in the typical Superman pose. The woman became the boy’s new hero and she replaced Batman and Spiderman that we see in the background, abandoned in a garbage can.
Simple, but effective, the message Banksy wanted to send out is a tribute to all those workers (from doctors to nurses and health workers) who never stopped during the Covid-19 emergency. "Heroes in the Lane", as they have often been defined, who become real superheroes in the work by the street artist.
And it is not the first time, during this quarantine, that the street artist from Bristol has made his voice heard: on Instagram, less than a month ago, he had published a work dedicated to the theme of smart working in which his iconic rats had tried to tell us about this need to which we all had to adapt.