Banksy Mural Debuts On The Lower East Side

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — The street artist Banksy debuted a massive 70-foot mural on Thursday depicting an imprisoned Turkish artist who was jailed for a single painting.

The anonymous English street artist took over the space known as the Houston Bowery Wall, which was first used as a canvas in the 1980s when Keith Haring painted one of his most iconic works of art there.

Banksy's latest mural portrays Zehra Dogan, the journalist and artist who was sentenced to nearly three years in prison for a painting of a Turkish town destroyed by state security forces, with Turkish flags flying over the scene. Dogan used a photograph in a newspaper as the inspiration for her painting.

Banksy encouraged his followers on Instagram to protest her imprisonment by re-gramming her painting and tagging the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Banksy's mural, made in collaboration with the artist Borf, debuted on Thursday to mark Dogan's first year in custody. The image depicts tallies representing the number of days she has been behind bars. Dogan's face is painted behind bars, with one hand holding a pencil.

A news release from Goldman Properties, the company that owns the Houston Bowery Wall, said that Dogan hasn't yet heard about the mural. She has 18 months of her sentence left to serve. At night, a projection of the watercolor that put Dogan in jail is portrayed above the mural.

Banksy preceded the massive mural with a small painting of a rat scurrying in a clock face on a Chelsea building.

Image credit: Courtesy of Goldman Properties