A new, 70-foot-long Banksy mural was unveiled in lower Manhattan Thursday.
The mural, on the corner of Houston Street and Bowery, protests the imprisonment of Turkish artist Zehra Dogan, according to the anonymous graffiti artist, who posted photos of the art on Instagram.
Dogan was sentenced to nearly 3 years in prison in March 2017 after she published a painting of a Turkish city that was damaged in 2015 by fighting between the Turkish army and Kurdish militants.
Banksy shared an image of Dogan’s painting on Instagram, writing, “One year ago Zehra Dogan was jailed for painting this watercolor of a photograph she saw in the newspaper. Protest against this injustice by re-gramming her painting and tagging Turkey’s President Erdogan.”
Banksy’s mural has black hash marks for every day Dogan has spent in prison, according to The New York Times, which first reported the appearance of the mural. It also includes a rendering of Dogan behind a prison cell, holding one of the bars that is also a pencil.
“Free Zehra Dogan” is written in the bottom right corner of the mural.
Banksy also unveiled another mural of a clock with a rat in it on a building on 14th Street and Sixth Avenue.
