British street artist Banksy has confirmed his involvement with the launch of an inflatable life raft — containing dummies in orange life jackets, representing migrants — during a set by British punk rock band Idles at the Glastonbury Festival in southwest England on Friday night.
The boat crowd-surfed during the band’s performance of “Danny Nedelko,” a track that condemns right-wing immigration policies.
The song begins: “My blood brother is an immigrant, a beautiful immigrant, my blood brother’s Freddie Mercury, a Nigerian mother of three. He’s made of bones, he’s made of blood, he’s made of flesh, he’s made of love, he’s made of you, he’s made of me, unity.”
Footage was shared on the artist’s Instagram page on Saturday. No caption was included. Watch the video here:
The stunt came days before the United Kingdom goes to the polls for its general election on July 4. One of the ruling Conservative Party’s key policies in recent years has been to “stop the boats,” meaning to prevent undocumented migrants from crossing the English Channel in small vessels.
British Home Secretary James Cleverly on Monday described the artwork as “vile” and “not funny” and “a celebration of the loss of life in the Channel.”
But critics claimed the minister was missing the entire point of the installation.
At Banksy’s 2015 “bemusement park” Dismaland in nearby Weston-super-Mare, visitors were given a stark reminder of the devastating impact of refugee crises when they were invited to operate toy boats filled with migrants as plastic figures of bodies floated by.
Banksy has also financed the M.V. Louise Michel boat, which rescues refugees attempting to reach Europe from Africa.
Watch the music video for Idles’ “Danny Nedelko” here:
