CCTV footage appears to show anonymous street artist Banksy painting one of the artworks he has created in war-torn Ukrainian towns. The works feature people doing daily tasks against war-torn buildings in Hostomel, Horenka and Borodyanka.
One includes a woman wearing a gas mask and carrying a fire extinguisher on the wall of a burnt out building. The towns in which the artwork is featured were the worst hit at the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
But there is one that has sparked particular interest after footage emerged of what appears to be an artist creating the image of a ballerina on the side of a bomb damaged building in Irpin. It shows a dancer in a neck brace, and was sprayed on the side of a bombed out building near a main road through the city.
The grainy video has a time stamp as if filmed on a CCTV camera, and it’s thought the film was first uploaded by Ukrainian TikTok user ‘this_irpin_grisha’, BristolLive reports.
Their caption states in Ukrainian that the video was first uploaded to YouTube, and asks if Banksy was ‘in the lens of CCTV’ in the town of Irpin. The video, which has been edited, shows a man in a face mask, black jacket and trousers walking towards a wall with a bag.
He gets out a spray can and begins spraying on the wall. The video cuts to show the half-completed work, with the artist occasionally looking over his shoulder towards a road where cars are driving past.
The final touches to the artwork - on the video at least - show the artist using black paint, and the final image shows the work completed. The wall shown being worked on with the artwork of the dancer in the neck brace does appear to be the same wall as the one in the images of the final artwork that has been confirmed by Banksy.
But questions remain about whether the man painting the work is Banksy himself, and whether he knew he was being filmed by CCTV at the time he carried out the work - the release of the footage could itself be part of Banksy’s work out in Ukraine, rather than an inadvertent slip.
Banksy has been captured on camera painting before - most notably in New York - and he’s not averse to revealing himself in his own work - albeit obscured. Other videos of him painting works on a London tube station, on the side of Reading prison and in Great Yarmouth have appeared on his own Instagram account. But his face has always been carefully obscured.
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