BANKSY // Welcome To Hell, 2004

  • Banksy’s 2004 Welcome to Hell protester in riot gear holding dystopian message sign.

    Banksy, Welcome To Hell, 2004.
    Screen-print in colours on wove paper, 50 × 35 cm.
    © Banksy.

    In Welcome to Hell, Banksy transforms one of his trademark rats into a miniature activist, clutching a placard scrawled with the title in dripping pink paint. Around its neck hangs a peace sign pendant, a detail that offsets the aggression of the slogan with a quiet call for harmony. This tension between protest and pacifism, humour and threat, encapsulates the contradictions that define much of Banksy’s practice.
     
    The work belongs to the Placard Rats series, alongside Because I’m Worthless and Get Out While You Can. Here, the rat – long a metaphor for survival, resistance, and invisibility – becomes a stand-in for the disaffected urban everyman. Its stark, minimal composition heightens the immediacy of the message, while the dripping text echoes the urgency of protest graffiti scrawled in the street. Darkly humorous yet politically charged, Welcome to Hell is both a satire of rebellion and a reminder of the systems that drive people to dissent.
     
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  • “Rats are the triumph of the little people, the undesirables and the unloved. They are the ultimate survivors.”

    – Banksy

    In Welcome to Hell, one of Banksy’s most memorable rat works, the rodent stands upright with a placard daubed in dripping pink letters that declare the piece’s title. Around its neck hangs a peace sign necklace, a subtle yet deliberate counterpoint to the aggressive slogan above. This clash of pacifist symbolism and anarchic messaging encapsulates the duality at the heart of Banksy’s practice – humour edged with menace, rebellion softened with irony.

    Part of the Placard Rats series, the work turns the rat into a miniature protester, embodying both vulnerability and resistance. Like much of Banksy’s output, Welcome to Hell speaks for the marginalised: creatures and communities dismissed or ignored, but unafraid to confront authority. Its simplicity – a stark stencil and a single line of text – belies its sharpness as social commentary, making it one of the artist’s enduring motifs.

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