Toxic Mary
Year: 2003
Medium: Spray-paint on wood
Dimensions: 120 x 240 cm
Edition: Unique
Exhibition History
Turf War, London, 2003
Toxic Mary was first shown to the public in Banksy’s 2003 London exhibition, Turf War. It shows the Virgin Mary feeding her infant son, Jesus Christ against a hot pink backdrop. It is a striking, bold and controversial piece considered blasphemous by many in religious circles. Art fans and Banksy collectors simply took the dark humored piece at face value, implying that Banksy is commenting on the relationship between mother and child.
However, there is no doubt that we one can also read some of Banksy’s own religious views into this rather shocking piece. He could be saying that extreme religiousness and bigotry can, in fact, be poisonous, and that poison can be passed down through generations, and spread through families and communities.
Instantly recognizable, Banksy’s signature style resulted from an altercation with the police at age eighteen. Fleeing the officers one evening, the artist hid beneath a garbage truck, where he studied the lettering on the side of the cabin door. Using both stencils and spray paint, he has developed a highly legible visual idiom evident in Toxic Mary. The resulting lines are matte and sharp, befitting an approach that is daring, brazen and political. Indeed, part of the appeal of the stencils comes from the inherited history of the repeatedly traced image: as the artist explained, “As soon as I cut my first stencil I could feel the power there. I also like the political edge. All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They’ve been used to start revolutions and to stop wars” (Banksy quoted in W. Ellesworth-Jones, “The Story Behind Banksy”, Smithsonian Magazines, February 2013.
