Yesterday, the citizens of Bristol took the long-overdue process of erasing a shrine to their city’s racist history into their own hands by uprooting a statue of seventeen-century slave trader Edward Colston and tossing it into Bristol Harbor. While this solves the problem of eliminating a public eyesore, it invites a new one: What should they do with the vacant plinth upon which the racist white fella once nested?
Banksy, as always, has a solution. The anonymous street artist took to Instagram a few hours ago to share an idea for a concept piece that would require protestors to retrieve the statue from the water and drag it back to it’s home, where the artist would put together a bronzed recreation of the statue’s toppling. It’s a win-win, he sarcastically notes. See his illustration for the piece below.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBNmTVZsDKS/
