BANKSY // Angel Flack Jacket, 2009

  • Banksy’s 2009 Angel Flack Jacket combines divinity and warfare, provocative street icon.
    Banksy, Angel Flack Jacket, 2009.
    Spray paint on wood, 244 × 82.8 cm.
    Signed and marked with the artist’s symbol on the reverse.
    © Banksy.
    Angel Flack Jacket (2009) is derived from one of Banksy’s earlier Shoreditch graffiti tributes, created in memory of fellow graffiti artist Ozone, who tragically died in 2007 while fleeing from police. The original street piece depicted a winged angel in a bulletproof vest holding a skull - a powerful, haunting image of innocence confronted by mortality. Banksy posted a note on his website at the time, commemorating Ozone’s passing and critiquing the art world’s slow recognition of underground talent. In this later reworking, the wings are removed, yet the cherubic figure remains clad in a flak jacket, suspended between vulnerability and defence.
     
     The protective vest, typically a symbol of violence or warfare, becomes a visual contradiction when placed on a figure traditionally associated with purity and peace. As with many of Banksy’s artworks, Angel Flack Jacket critiques institutional violence and questions the systems that criminalise youth, especially those operating on the margins of society.
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  • “When it’s gone, it’s gone. But that’s the point. They are performance pieces." 

    - Banksy 

    First exhibited in 2009, Angel Flack Jacket evolved from Banksy’s Shoreditch street tribute to Ozone, a young graffiti artist who died in 2007 while escaping police. In this reworking, the wingless cherubic figure wears a bulletproof vest, embodying the tension between innocence and protection, fragility and militarisation. The image strips away sentimentality, leaving a stark contradiction at its core.
     
    By fusing a symbol of purity with one of warfare, Banksy critiques the systems that criminalise youth and turn vulnerability into a battlefield. The piece remains both personal and political, a meditation on loss, resilience, and state power.
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