Protest as a Force Against Whitewashed History - Post #2 by Amy Magnus

Banksy. "Royal Courts Of Justice. London." (2025), paint stenciled on marble.

On 08 September 2025, a mural appeared on a building at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Rendered by the street artist Banksy, the mural depicts a wigged judge beating a fallen protester with a gavel. The artwork in stark black and white stencil with a spatter of blood red appeared two days after 890 people were arrested at a free speech protest against the ban on the group Palestine Action under the United Kingdom's Terrorist Act. 

Almost immediately the mural was covered up. Efforts made to remove it from the government building were only partially successful resulting in a shadow of the original image.

Banksy. "Royal Courts Of Justice. London." (2025), paint stenciled on marble. Damaged by attempt to remove artwork.

As the street art was being removed, a spokesperson for the HM Courts and Tribunals Service said the service was obligated to maintain the "original character" of the Queen's Building which was completed in 1968 and listed as Grade II. However, the BBC reported that a gallery owner John Brandler who possesses multiple Banksy murals for trade said the service could have easily hired a dealer to remove the artwork so that it could be used to raise charitable funds. Brandler valued the original work at $6.8 million.

In history, it is rare for depictions of protests to survive. Historian Sarah Bond recently sat down with Hrag Vartanian of the Hyperallergic podcast to discuss collective labor actions in the ancient world. Bond noted that artworks are generally where she was most likely to find depictions of labor actions as the preservation of written histories was largely in the hands of the elite class until the 1800s. Once the industrial revolution and art of photography took hold, collective actions of workers were documented with greater regularity and accuracy, benefiting historians who wish to study protests.

The website Hyperallergic has an intentional practice of covering strikes within the arts community, examining how new generations of workers are asserting themselves in the workplace. Beyond the traditional issues of workplace conditions, timely compensation, and staffing, voice in the workplace is an emerging demand sought with greater urgency. Workers seek voice to contribute to their workplace endeavor but also to maintain their dignity as narratives depicting workers as angry and uncivilized are often deployed to weaken labor actions. 

Robert Koehler, "Der Streik." (1886), oil on canvas, 71 2/5 x 108 1/2 inches. Image from the Wikipedia Commons.

The role that art has served for labor actions has been to preserve the human dignity and sacrifice of the collective. 

Bond notes that skilled artisans participated in collective bargaining in its earliest recordings. Most of the earliest recordings survive from ancient Egypt where workers sat out of work in sanctuary spaces of the temples to protest the lack of compensation. Importantly, temples offered asylia, or asylum, so that workers could not be dragged from sacred spaces but instead could peacefully assert their rights. 

Much of the early preserved records that Bond has been able to examine come from cultures that were actively resisting colonization from nation states such as the Roman Empire. These cultures had great interest in sharing what collective actions proved effective. Bond notes that the record in Egypt is particularly strong as rulers were motivated to preserve depictions the artisans that they wished to follow them into the afterworld so that they could enjoy earthly luxuries after they passed over. 

Some see Banksy's protest mural in London as an intention statement on the suppression of voice through state violence. The selected site of the mural almost certainly destined the work for immediate erasure, yet some point to the ghost image left behind as more powerfully evocative than the original lost work. 

Banksy. "Love is in the Air." (2006), paint on canvas.

The artwork "Royal Courts Of Justice. London." (2025) is not the first in which Banksy has made a statement on the conflict in Gaza. The mural comes after Banksy produced and promoted a series of murals in Gaza itself in 2005. One piece "Flower Thrower" (2003) has had a life beyond its original Gaza-based mural...a smaller rendering "Love is in the Air" (2006) sold at Sothebys and the stenciled figure recently been appropriated for protests in Washington DC following the arrest of a man who threw a sandwich at an officer in protest of the city's occupation by the National Guard. "Love is in the Air" (2006) combines Bansky's stenciled art with a more freely painted depiction of a flower bouquet juxtaposing stark violence and a joyful gift of love.

Sandwich Guy posters riff on Banksy's iconic artwork "Flower Thrower" (2003). Photo by Alyssa Michener.

Bond notes that collective actions particularly those undertaken by labor convey the principles of stoicism in action, not the quest to become superhuman and leaving others in the dust, but to rise up together to realize our full potential with dignity, caring, and grace.

Magnus, Amy. "Under the pavement, beach." (2021), digital ink and watercolor.

Public art has long been a force to ignite and inspire the public. It offers a vocabulary and simple concrete images to organize around. Calls to collective action such as "sous les paves, la plage" from the French working class began infamously as street art. The phrase means "under the paving stones, the beach" and suggests it is in the productive and fulfilling lives of common people that the foundation of great society is built. 

Vartanian, Hrag. “Ancient Art, Wages, and Strikes: A 3000-Year-Old History of Labor.” Hyperallergic, Episode 115, 06 May 2025. https://podcast.hyperallergic.com/episodes/ancient-art-wages-and-strikes-a-3000-year-old-history-of-labor. Accessed 30 September 2025.

Bond, Sarah. "The Ancient Art of the Labor Strike." Hyperallergic. 01 September 2024. https://hyperallergic.com/946991/the-ancient-art-of-the-labor-strike/. Accessed 30 September 2025.

"Banksy mural scrubbed from Royal Courts of Justice." BBC, 10 September 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2z30p033ro. Accessed 30 September 2025.

"The Absurdity of War: Banksy's Love Is In The Air." Sotheby's, 22 April 2022.  https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/the-absurdity-of-war-banksys-love-is-in-the-air. Accessed 30 September 2025.

Mackintosh, Thomas and Paddy Evans. "New Banksy mural appears at Royal Courts of Justice." BBC, 08 September 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrq0r0y878o. Accessed 30 September 2025.

Marshall, Alex. "British Courts Service Destroys Banksy Mural Depicting Attack by Judge". The New York Times, 10 September 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/arts/design/banksy-destroyed.html. Accessed 30 September 2025.

Mills, Joel. "Sous les pavés, la plage: 1968 and the revolution that never was." Medium, 20 August 2018. https://medium.com/@joelmills66/sous-les-pav%C3%A9s-la-plage-1968-and-the-revolution-that-never-was-d811eb88882e. Accessed 01 October 2025.