BANKSY - NOLA (SIGNED)

Screen print on wove paper

Signed edition of 289 - Framed

Pest Control COA

Nola was released in late 2008 as a limited edition of 289 signed prints with White Rain. The edition size of 289 relates to the age of the city of New Orleans, where this visual first appeared.

Nola portrays a young girl in black and white, dressed in a black dress beneath a black umbrella, her hand extended to feel the rain pouring down. The background is a block of grey as white rain falls from the umbrella. This artwork originally appeared as a mural on a wall in New Orleans. This striking image of a girl being drenched by rain from inside her umbrella is in reference to the devastating event of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which was amplified by the failure of the flood defences that had been designed to protect the citizens from such a disaster. Naturally, an umbrella is designed to keep the individual using it dry and protected from the elements. The fact that the rain is falling not from the sky but instead from the inside of the umbrella is Banksy’s way of suggesting to the viewer that very things (or institutions) that were created and designed to protect us can, at times, do quite the opposite – a scathing indictment of FEMA and the government’s response to protect and help the people directly affected by Hurricane Katrina.