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.

    Back to: Banksy Originals

     

    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.

  • “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