BANKSY // Picnic, 2006

  • Banksy’s 2006 Picnic shows innocent scene surrounded by soldiers, safety illusion in conflict zone.
    Banksy, Picnic, 2006.
    Original work missing. Medium and dimensions unknown.
    © Banksy.
    Banksy’s Picnic stages a surreal collision between worlds. On one side, a group of indigenous African hunter-gatherers stand frozen in confusion, staring at a white, middle-class family casually enjoying a picnic on a beach. The family appears entirely at ease - sipping drinks, lounging in deck chairs - seemingly unaware they are being watched.
     
    Typical of Banksy’s provocative social commentary, Picnic raises questions about colonialism, privilege, and cultural blindness. The hunter-gatherers look upon the family as if they were alien beings, while the family seems insulated by their lifestyle and comforts. By placing these figures together in a single frame, Banksy turns a beach scene into a biting metaphor for exploitation, historical ignorance, and the absurdities of global inequality - all served with a side of sandwiches and suncream.

     

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  • “The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules.”
    – Banksy
    Created in 2005, Picnic depicts a white family enjoying a seaside meal, unaware of a group of indigenous hunter-gatherers observing them. The composition contrasts leisure and survival, comfort and confusion, using stark irony to highlight global inequality. By merging the everyday with the extreme, Banksy underscores how privilege blinds societies to exploitation and cultural displacement.
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