“Game Changer” writes Banksy, captioning the piece he posted on his Instagram page on May 6, 2020. Banksy, an anonymous street artist based in the UK, has become synonymous with ruthlessly straightforward satire on the world. While the artist’s style of stencil-based street art and a majorly monochrome palette contrasting a pop of colour reflects Banksy in the pieces, the artist’s distance from the artworks is what makes the pieces come alive in their infamous commentary on politics, climate change, or ignorance. When Banksy makes a piece and puts it out into the world, there is a voice which whispers in my ear amidst the commentary and unsettles me because of how close it got to my person. But as I scrolled down my Instagram timeline on May 6, I came across a piece which did not make me squirm (not even a little bit). With over 9 million following Banksy on Instagram, art across the world, and multiple darkly humorous ventures, this untitled painting reveals something new.  

 

The painting, found at England’s Southampton General Hospital, features a predominantly monochrome palette, and a small red cross stands out on the nurse’s apron. The work shows a child playing with a pandemic nurse who has a superhero cape fastened around her neck and a mask covering her mouth, while known superhero figures, Batman and Spiderman, lie in a dejected heap inside a waste-paper basket. The earnest tribute to NHS workers in the UK and health-workers worldwide was accompanied by a note reading, “Thanks for all you’re doing. I hope this brightens the place up a bit, even if it’s only black and white”. The painting hangs on Level C of the hospital, open to staff and patients.  

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The straightforward consideration of the times and changed perception of heroism in the piece also features a subtle nod to a shifting narrative. Deviating from Banksy’s more usual scene-setting of satirical figures revealing a dark commentary on our society, this piece is the ‘Game Changer’ when it comes to the artist’s thematic consideration as well. Banksy’s usual stencilled-on-the-wall street art seems to have shied away from this piece, as the chosen medium of a painting brings out the intended calmness the scene. The artwork made with the intention that it “brightens the place up a bit”, in Banksy’s words, discloses that the piece was, from the start, made for someone else’s happiness. The artwork reveals a softer side of Banksy and moves the viewer to consider changes during the pandemic with a warmth for those on the front lines. 

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Innocence and appreciation are brought to the thematic forefront in the piece, symbolised in the child’s engagement with a nurse-superhero doll. Earlier works of Banksy, like Snow in December 2018, used the role of the child in the scene and the innocence it symbolises, to bring out the exploitative tendencies of society. But this tribute to healthcare workers uses the symbol of innocence quite differently. The piece approaches innocence as more than vulnerability, connecting it closely with new thought and how COVID-19 might redefine the world for the better, and how we must let it do so. Symbols like the nurse in the superhero cape uses a Banksy-approach of alluding to time-relevant and culture-relevant images to create a strong impact. As the child plays with his new doll, this new hero, the viewer looking into the painted scene is eased into the idea of a post-COVID world, thinking, “seeing things newly is okay”.

 

Why is it important to think of this piece right now? The quiet scene can be powerful and discusses a changed relationship between heroism and nurturing. The visual of the nurse picked up by the child as the superhero of his choice, as the more archetypal superheroes watch awkwardly from the wastepaper basket, is important to consider as society slowly opens in the wake of COVID. While the child may represent an innocence or nascence of thought, the nurse as a superhero is redefining something old. Heroism that relates to healing and nurturing. The distinct red cross that blossoms across the nurse’s apron is the logo for the UK's Red Cross. The unmistakable symbolism keeps track with Banksy’s allusion to the past in works about the present, recognising that the connection between healing and conflict or nurturing and heroism has been present for decades. Even if being a hero and being a healer was once considered mutually exclusive, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light that they were never that different. The visual of a woman or a mother or a nurse as a hero is a perspective gaining momentum as the pandemic reveals that we must think more about how we care for those in our lives. As the child in the painting accepts the role of nurturing in heroism without second thought, a hopeful future is ensured to all viewers who paused in front of the piece, one in which consideration of others is represented alongside courage and talent.   

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Thinking newly seems to be a large part of the piece, alongside appreciating the underappreciated, but the role of the past works hardest to bring out these two themes. Banksy carefully evaluates the past in each of his artworks, whether it be war, or racism or the rat race most can’t seem to escape. In this piece, the image of the Spider-Man and Bat-Man toys resting clumsily in the wastepaper basket is used to draw a more emphatic visual using a comparison of heroism through time in popular media. But the role of these two toys in the piece articulated an uncomfortable question the more I looked at it: is there a chance that the nurse will end up in there sometime?  

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The square painting keeps the activity company in the Southampton General Hospital, and sometimes I think of the child in the painting sitting quietly on Level C and playing with his toys. I think of nurses and doctors and patients and janitors and just about everybody else pausing to look at this scene. I imagine them moving on, to attend to whatever they must attend to, as the boy from the future plays behind a thin glass window. I imagine a comfort of looking at the one future, the one freeze frame, unconcerned by any other “what may be” besides the one in the painting.