A shopping window with a twist.
Since Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol pushed the boundaries of what’s considered art by bringing a toilet and soup can into a museum, several artists have been challenging the role of art in society and who defines it.
Banksy is a legitimate heir of these trailblazers and his irreverent and socially charged work never lets us down. If art has no purpose, the artist’s latest expression puts a new spin on this paradigm. In fact, this time it isn’t art at all.
The mysteriously subversive artist has launched his own merchandise line to protect his brand against a greeting-card company that is trying to "seize legal custody" of his name.
Gross Domestic Product is a temporary pop-up shop where the products are there for display purposes only. It is also Banksy’s newest installation to critique global society’s major issues of forced human migration, animal exploitation and the surveillance state. Art or not, this activation shows the stopping power of great design with a message.