Banksy: ‘Steve Jobs was son of a Syrian migrant’
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Banksy’s latest works have appeared in a refugee camp in Calais, France. One depicts the late Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, carrying a sack over his shoulder and a Macintosh computer.
Photographs of the new works are featured on the street artist’s website. The photo of Jobs is captioned, “the son of a migrant from Syria.”
A second mural, which appeared in the Calais town center, show struggling refugees on a boat, trying to flag down a luxury yacht. The image is based on the French painter Theodore Gericault’s, “The Raft of the Medusa”
The photo caption for that work read, “We’re not all in the same boat.”
A third work, that appears on a beach in Calais, shows the silhouette of a child, looking through a telescope, out towards the direction of England. A vulture is perched on the top of the child’s telescope.
Other photos from the camp, show makeshift tents in front of the walls, and graffiti scrawled near Banksy’s work, including “Nobody deserves to live this way” and “Maybe this whole situation will just sort itself out”
In a rare public statement, issued to the British media, Banksy said, “We’re often led to believe migration is a drain on the country’s resources but Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian migrant. Apple is the world’s most profitable company, it pays over $7bn (£4.6bn) a year in taxes – and it only exists because they allowed in a young man from Homs.”
Earlier this year, Banksy announced that his theme park Dismaland was going to be turned into shelters for migrants in the Calais camp.
“The Jungle,” as the migrant camp is known, is home to at least 3,000 migrants from countries including Sudan, Syria and Afghanistan.
Having learned about the artworks, a Calais city spokeswoman said local authorities would protect the murals.
-cnn
ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson
[email protected] An Entrepreneur, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Communications Executive and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. His first degree is in Bachelor of Arts - Political Science (major) and History (minor) from the University of Ghana. He holds MSc in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) from the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow who studied at Clark Atlanta University in USA on the Business and Entrepreneurship track.
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