The art world is surrounded by mysteries, however, one of the biggest and most controversial of our time might be Banksy’s identity. The British graffiti artist has become a reference for provocative and anti-capitalist street art. He uses his art as a way to enter activism and criticize today’s society, and though his artworks have appeared in several places all around the world, to this day his identity is still unknown.
The fascination for his ability to remain anonymous has come to the point that art experts and fans have applied police techniques to come up with an identity. Moreover, Banksy himself has done everything in his or her power to remain unidentified and confuse those who try to unveil his true face.
Of course, this hasn’t stopped people to wonder which is Banksy’s real identity and even though there are many theories that border on absurdity, there are a couple that could really point to who is the man or woman behind those graffitis that has captivated the art world. These are some of the most plausible theories about Banksy’s true identity.
Banksy is not a person but rather a collective
There is a theory that claims that Banksy is not an individual street artist, but rather a collective with a presence in different parts of the world, the reason why it has been easier to spread their art in several cities and not to concentrate all in one.
According to this theory, the collective believes that the streets belong to everyone and that anyone can use its walls to express themselves.
Although there is no real evidence to point at a Banksy collective, it doesn’t sound so crazy.
A man identified by police techniques
In 2016, criminologist at London’s Queen Mary University used a technique called geographic profiling to try to identify the real Banksy.
Geographic profiling is a statistical technique used in criminology but has recently been used to trace infectious diseases, that take large sets of locations and run through various groupings of those locations to find “hot spots” in every city it is applied to.
That is how researchers took 140 artworks in London and Bristol identified as being Banksy’s property. It resulted in “geoprofiling” a candidate named Robin Gunningham, who in 2008 was named by The Mail on Sunday as Banksy’s real identity.
However, Banksy’s PR team denied the results of both The Mail’s investigation and the geoprofiling analysis.
Banksy is a prolific musician doing graffiti in his spare time
One of the strongest and, let’s face it, coolest theories on Banksy’s identity is the one that claims that the street artist is in fact Robert Del Naja, leader of the British band Massive Attack.
This theory is backed up by a correlation between concert dates and new artworks appearing in different cities. For example, Massive Attack gave a concert in Los Angeles in 2006, coincidentally a Banksy exhibition was going to be open one week before it. The same happened in 2008 when Del Naja was making a documentary about Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans while at the same time Banksy left some of his stencils around the very same city.
However, the strongest evidence might come from DJ Goldie who in 2017, during an interview referred to Banksy as “Rob”.
Will we ever know Banksy’s real identity?
It’s up to him or her. If the street artist is willing to lose all of the copyright of the artworks, then we’ll never know the real identity and that is because in 2021 a new ruling by the European Union Intellectual Property Office stripped Banksy of their trademark rights to two art pieces with the excuse of not having a real identity to whom attribute the copyright.
