BANKSY // Hanging Klansman, 2009

  • Banksy’s 2009 Hanging Klansman controversial piece exposing racism and Southern history.

    Banksy, Hanging Klansman, 2009.

    Original work missing. Medium and dimensions unknown.

    © Banksy.

    Hanging Klansman is one of Banksy’s most provocative works from his Crude Oils series, in which the artist hijacks traditional landscape paintings to embed sharply political, unsettling imagery. Set within a lush, pastoral landscape reminiscent of 19th-century Romantic painting, the idyllic scenery is ruptured by the horrifying presence of a Ku Klux Klan figure, lifelessly hanging from a tree in the foreground. 
     
    With this work, Banksy confronts the viewer with the uncomfortable truth that violence, racism, and systemic hate are not just present in history - they are embedded in its very fabric. The visual juxtaposition of the picturesque and the horrific intensifies the message, implicating both cultural nostalgia and historical erasure. It is a haunting reminder that beneath every romanticised vision of the past lies a darker, often suppressed, truth.
     
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  • “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”

    – Banksy

    Part of Banksy’s notorious Crude Oils series, Hanging Klansman reimagines a picturesque countryside with a chilling intervention: the body of a Ku Klux Klan member hanging from a tree. The pastoral calm of the 19th-century-style landscape is violently disrupted, forcing the viewer to confront the brutality that underpins supposedly “civilised” history.
     
    By inserting this image into a traditional format, Banksy exposes how nostalgia and national identity often mask systemic racism and violence. The work is both a subversion of fine art traditions and a searing reminder that beauty and brutality are frequently bound together
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