An Open Letter To Banksy…

- The Sunday Service : An Insider's Guide To Cool Britannia

The Whitewash

This week’s Sunday Service takes the form of an ‘open letter’ to one of Britain’s best contemporary artists – the graffiti artist Banksy.  While his true identity is a mystery, his compositions often reach five and six figures amounts when sold at auction. Along with Lowry (also a great British artist), Banksy’s art has a staggering ability to affect me.

Dear Mr. Banksy,

We both know that the likelihood of you ever reading this letter is minuscule. However, I’m the type of woman who will bring down a wall – one letter at a time. So write it, I must.

There is a wall, a whitewashed wall (pictured below) that I can see from my apartment in Liverpool’s Ropewalks area. The wall (a side elevation of a building on Henry St.) does not belong to me, nor does it belong to anyone I know. Notwithstanding, I am writing to ask you to adorn the whitewashed wall with your art. Not only do I want you to adorn the wall with your art; I want the art to reflect an intrinsic part of Liverpool’s heritage – the slave trade.

Someone once said of this town, “Every brick is cemented with an African's blood.” Indeed, ‘Penny Lane,’ a street immortalized by the Beatles’ song, is in fact named after the Captain of a slave ship – Ct. James Penny. I’m sure you’re aware of Liverpool and Bristol’s pivotal role in the  ‘triangular trade.’

This city is my adopted hometown. Sometimes…actually, every time I walk my dog along the River Mersey, past the Albert Dock and The Three Graces towards the mouth of the estuary, I feel a quiet surge of sadness. – Like Yoda did in  'Revenge Of The Sith' when Darth Vader slays the Jedi children. I have come to realize that the surge of sadness I feel is my awareness of the Maafa.

If you were able to oblige my request, you would be more than welcome to stay in my home. If your anonymity while in my home concerns you, I would be more than happy to provide you with a ‘gimp mask’ from the local knocking shop.

I imagine you to be middle-class and if not middle-class, then certainly suburban. If you are, it’s okay – I won't judge you. I know better than most, poor people make the best snobs. When I held the post of Liverpool Football Club’s first Official Resident Poet, people would often wrongly assume I was posh. Perhaps, it was because I wrote poetry, or perhaps, because in order to write I have extended my vocabulary from the lower-class mother tongue with which I was raised.  Conversely, just because you are a graffiti artist, I won't assume you are “street.” When I was younger, I wrote my name in nail varnish on a derelict building that was situated on the corner of our road. I was severely castigated for it. When I see your art I smile (on the inside – where it really counts), cos you proved the adults wrong and that somehow validates the arse whooping I got! In any event, the type of gift you have surpasses class and cultural barriers.

I hope to wake one afternoon (I’m nocturnal) and see on that whitewashed wall, a memorial to the slaves. A place where I can see them emancipated from in-between the bricks of this city. Not represented in a municipal way; but in an urban, wild, unauthorized and lawless way…a way that perhaps only you can deliver.

I imagine the slaves’ blood flowing up-stream, seeping through the banks of the river, filtering though the city’s foundations and oozing from beneath the cobbles. I imagine their blood rising-up between the bricks; then, through the mortar of the building as it slowly permeates the whitewashed wall with your art, as if to say – I WAS ERE…

–Cheyelle Omar

← BANKSY

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