Dismaland: Ariel

Banksy is the title attributed to an anonymous street artist,who often uses controversy and politics to inspire his artwork. Banksy is assumed to have been born around 1974 in Bristol, England. He began doing street art as a member of DryBreadZ Crew: a Bristol graffiti gang. His work first started emerging during the 1990's and was predominately free handed, until the late 1990's when he began to use stencils and create his specific style. Since then Banksy has become spectacularly well recognized for his street art. He targets and mocks politics, controversial issues, and the corruption of society. He includes key characters in his artwork mostly rats, apes, children, police, and royals. His work has gone from being perceived as simple graffiti to some of the most widely known, and quite expensive pieces of art. Banksy is not only a street artist, but has produced installations, stencil paintings, silkscreen prints, and films. Through all of his artistic popularity Banksy has managed to keep his identity secret, which adds to the curiosity and mystery to his character. Many fan's of Banksy want to know who Banksy is so they can better understand his past and how he became the notorious Banksy. 

 Banksy has recently created a post apocalyptic Disney Land titled Dismaland. Within this new, eerie world, Banksy has included mixtures of his own artwork along with other artist installations to create this surreal world. One of Banksy's pieces is the distorted Ariel that greets people at the beginning of the amusement park. Banksy plays with the preconceived idea of what Ariel, and what she embodies, means. Ariel is part of Disney's princesses meaning she is prim, beautiful, thin, and naturally a damsel in distress. Through Disney and other media aspects, society has been conditioned to believe that beauty only looks one way, and that girls must achieve this look and behave certain way. Banksy tears down that societal set up, by warping Ariel's body. She is distorted, glitchy, and visually confusing. Ariel is a well known character, and viewers know what she is "suppose" to look like, therefore seeing her in that state throws viewer's visual sense off. Through warping her body Banksy relays the message that not everything perceived as perfect is, and that maybe the definition of perfect is warped. Society has such high standards of beauty, these standards are so unattainable and ludicrous that beauty and societal norms have become perverted. 

The distorted Ariel is beautiful for a multitude of reasons. Namely,for how visually intriguing she is. Her body looks as if someone began to rewind a VCR tape and stopped. There is a sort of movement to her shaping, like if someone continued to rewind her image would disappear in a moment. Another intriguing aspect to Ariel is the juxtaposition between her distorted body and the environment around her. She is placed in the dirty water, and in front of the grimy replica of a castle. While these aspects add to the apocalyptic aesthetic to Dismaland, they also lend a psychedelic feeling while viewing her. She is warped, but clean, while the rest of her environment, while dirty is built in a realistic way. The contrast between Ariel and her environment is visually stimulating. Ariel and her environment create an eerily beautiful, distorted, surrealistic world. Her sculpture might not be one of the same types of beauty as sculptures from Ancient Greek or the Renaissance periods, but the sculpture is beautiful because of the nontraditional way Banksy perceived Ariel, and the way the sculpture was molded to fit into the environment around. What makes this sculpture so beautiful is the visual engagement needed when viewing the piece.