Here is my HCE assignment. for this assignment, I chose Banksy’s painting “No Trespassing” and wrote an expository paragraph about the painting and how it explores the theme of respect.
Here is my expository paragraph about the image:
Analysis of Banksy’s Graffiti Painting “No Trespassing” as a Social Commentary on the Treatment of Indigenous Peoples.
Banksy’s image “No Trespassing” is a graffiti painting that explores and is commenting on how the land of the 1st peoples was taken from them and then the colonizers put up no trespassing signs despite them literally trespassing on the indigenous people’s land, but if one looks further into the image, they will notice a lot more than what is on the surface.
For example, if one looks at the way the man is dressed, he is dressed in his traditional clothing which speaks of the past and how the man might be defying what the colonizers want him to do by continuing to practice his culture despite the Europeans wanting them to become like the Europeans. They might also notice that the man in the picture is looking ahead possibly because he is waiting to turn away anyone who tries to trespass his land. In the image, the man is holding up a sign that says “no trespassing” but the interesting thing about the sign is that the actual sign that the man is holding up is not part of the graffiti. The owners of the building put that sign up and Banksy found that ironic, so he proceeded to do that graffiti on the building. The man is sitting on the ground unmoving which could literally mean that he won’t move and that he will not stand for injustice. Banksy did this graffiti over other people’s graffiti tags possibly poking fun at the way that someone could just write their name in goofy letters on the side of a building and call it art whereas he goes and makes statements with his art and by putting this image over those other tags Banksy could also be saying that tagging the side of a building is not art and then proceeding to show what real art is.
In conclusion, Banksy’s painting “No Trespassing” is a social commentary image that provokes thoughts on the mistreatment of indigenous people throughout history.