Little by little, New York City is losing Banksy’s graffiti. First, the Black Seal was moved from the wall of a gas station in Midwood, Brooklyn, in 2019. Now, Bronx gem Ghetto 4 Life is being relocated to the courtyard of 800 Union Avenue in Bridgeport, Connecticut. According to Fine Art Shippers, who started the extraction on Monday afternoon, February 26, the aim is to preserve and protect Banksy’s artworks from destruction, covering, neglect, and vandalism. The last one standing in all the five boroughs seems to be Zabar’s Banksy (2013) on West 79th Street on the Upper West Side.
Ghetto 4 Life is one of Banksy’s most famous New York murals, located on the wall of the Melrose building at 651 Elton Avenue in the South Bronx. The building is being demolished to make room for a new charter school. The graffiti shows a young boy writing the words “Ghetto 4 life” in red bubble letters as a butler offers him a tray of spray cans. It appeared in October 2013, as part of Banksy’s “Better Out Than In” series that filled New York with his artworks. Highly contested at first, claiming it echoed negative stereotypes of the neighborhood, residents grew to love it. And artist fans went to the Bronx to take pictures of it.
Fine Art Shippers will completely remove the mural, 10 tons heavy and 9-by-20 feet high. It will be restored, making sure that, “they bring it back to its original state”. The new location in Connecticut–two hours away from the South Bronx–is a 1940 factory complex turned into a business hub owned by Kiumarz Geula of Pillar Property Management. Despite being a private property, Ghetto 4 Life will be accessible to the public, likely enclosed in non-reflective glass, according to the representative of the British artist who spoke with the New York Daily News.
