Visual Culture

Banksy revealed he made the vest that the rapper Stormzy wore at Glastonbury.

Benjamin Sutton
Jul 1, 2019 3:24PM, via CNN

Stormzy performs at Glastonbury on June 28, 2019, wearing a vest created by the artist Banksy. Photo by Jim Dyson/Getty Images.

On Friday night, when the Grime music superstar Stormzy took to the main stage at the Glastonbury music festival, he was wearing a Banksy. The rapper came out wearing what appeared to be a bulletproof vest, emblazoned with the Union Jack flag. After the historical performance—Storrmzy became not only the second-youngest performer to headline the festival, after David Bowie, but also the first solo black British artists to do so—Banksy revealed in an Instagram post that he had created the distinctive vest.

In the post’s caption, Banksy specified it was a “stab-proof vest,” a likely reference to the U.K.’s knife crime crisis, which Stormzy has referred to in his comments and lyrics. In a subsequent post on Twitter, Stormzy implied he was not even aware that his Glastonbury costume had been created by Banksy.

The surprise appearance by a Banksy artwork at the U.K.’s biggest music festival was not the artist’s first outing at Glastonbury. In 2014, his artwork Sirens of the Lambs (2013)—a truck filled with howling animatronic stuffed animals—drove around the festival at meal times. And, depending on which theory about Banksy’s real identity you subscribe to, he may have actually headlined the festival in 2008—some people believe the secretive artist is the alter ego of Massive Attack co-founder Robert Del Naja. The theory gained enough of a foothold that Banksy himself broke his silence to repudiate it.

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Benjamin Sutton