Banksy’s mural with the words “Free Zehra Doğan” popped up in New York on the corner of Houston Street and the Bowery in Manhattan.
Source: Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
Zehra Doğan is a Turkish-Kurdish artist and journalist. She was sentenced to 2 years, 9 months and 22 days in jail for one of her paintings, which features a destroyed town with Turkish flags waving over the smoking rubble.
Banksy worked on the mural with street artist Borf. The artwork is a 20-metre piece depicting prison bars in the form of tally marks. Doğan is depicted behind one of the cells, holding a bar that doubles like a pencil. The number of bars indicates the number of days the artist has spent in prison. On the first day, Zehra’s painting, for which she was jailed, was projected above the mural.
Banksy said about his artwork: “I really feel for her [Zehra Doğan]. I’ve painted things much more worthy of a custodial sentence,” the New York Times quotes him as saying. He posted the artist’s painting on Instagram and called on followers to protest her jail term by reposting the painting and tagging Turkish president Recep Erdoğan alongside the hashtag #FREEzehradogan.
Doğan was arrested in June 2016. The authorities claimed her work proved her involvement in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is deemed a terrorist organisation in Turkey.
After Turkey’s failed coup, about 35,000 people, among them academics, artists, cartoonists and other cultural figures, have been detained. On March 16, 2018, 24 journalists were convicted on charges of having ties to terrorists with the aim of overthrowing the president. The Committee to Protect Journalists says Turkey has more jailed journalists than any other country, Artforum reports.
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