{"id":694,"date":"2025-09-19T20:04:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T20:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/french2025\/?p=694"},"modified":"2025-09-19T20:04:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T20:04:15","slug":"protest-art-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/french2025\/2025\/09\/19\/protest-art-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Protest Art"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Banksy’s mural of a judge beating a protestor with a gavel, located on the Queen’s Court Building in London, September 8th 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This mural depicts a judge beating a protestor with their gavel, beating the protestor enough to cause deep red blood to splatter on his sign, while the rest of the image is in black and white.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many layers to this mural: On the surface, it is a timeless piece, demonstrating the tendency for the law to silence what it cannot handle, or what it disagrees with; however, within context, it is both a social and political commentary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mural was made within the context of the current conflict occurring in Gaza, and its influence of global politics, in particular on protests and support groups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Banksy created this mural to protest the UK designation of a Palenstinian support group as terrorists, leading to arrests of the members and other protestors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The judge represents the Court’s choice to effectively legalize the abuse and silencing of those in support of Palestine, with the protestor themselves representing those oppressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The blood being the only color in the otherwise black and white work highlights the importance of the blood, showing the injury given by the Court to the freedom to express support for Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The blood also more broadly represents the continued abuses of the courts across time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The use of black and white makes neither the judge nor the protestor specific enough to belong to any place or time, allowing anyone to see themselves and their oppressor, their struggle, expressed within the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This mural was created to demonstrate the current systematic censoring of anything deemed taboo or against the current political agenda: globally, regionally, or domestically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The work was further enhanced when it was washed off the building; the building is a protected site, so the unlicensed mural was not something approved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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However, the removal of this mural highlighted one very important fact of protest and progress: the faces, names, and even specific details of an event may be lost to time or censorship, but the general shape, the outline of those before us, their effort, never fades. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It continues to inspire us and shows us what was so that we can bring forward what should be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Banksy’s mural of a judge beating a protestor with a gavel, located on the Queen’s Court Building in London, September 8th 2025. This mural depicts a judge beating a protestor with their gavel, beating the protestor enough to cause deep red blood to splatter on his sign, while the rest of the image is in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":706,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/french2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/french2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/french2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/french2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/706"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/french2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/french2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":760,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/french2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions\/760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/french2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/french2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/french2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}