Banksy protest artwork unveiled in NY

Banksy in downtown Manhattan protests the imprisonment of Zehra Dogan. Credit Tony Cenicola The New York Times

Banksy in downtown Manhattan protests the imprisonment of Zehra Dogan. Credit Tony Cenicola The New York Times

Banksy expressed empathy for Dogan in a statement to The New York Times, saying he had done work far more deserving of punishment.

Zehra Dogan was reportedly imprisoned past year for her painting of a brutally damaged Turkish city.

The New York Times reported that the mural was 70ft long, made in collaboration with graffiti artist Borf and was unveiled yesterday.

British artist Banksy has unveiled a mural in NY highlighting the case of a Turkish artist who was jailed for almost three years over a painting.

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Banksy's sparse mural mostly consists of black hash marks, which visually represent jail cell bars and count the number of days that Ms. Dogan has spent in prison. In one of the cells a portrait of the artist appears behind the marks, gripping at the jail cells bars, with one of the bars doubling as a pencil. In the painting Turkish flags can be seen flying above the rubble of buildings. She shared her picture on social media, for which she was then arrested and sentenced to almost three years in prison. According to TurkeyPurge, a journalist collective who monitor Human Rights abuses, Doğan had said in a since-deleted tweet: "I was given two years and 10 months [jail time] only because I painted Turkish flags on destroyed buildings". During her trial, she argued that the painting was part of her work as a journalist-she is best-known for founding Jinha, a feminist Kurdish news agency. "I only painted it". She was charged with being connected to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, an armed group calling for an independent Kurdish state within Turkey.

The photograph was taken by government forces in the area where they had fought Kurdish militants.

The prison hasn't allowed Dogan any art supplies to continue her painting, though there are a number of activists fighting to get her painting supplies so that she can continue her art.

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