Laugh Now, 2006

Catalogue Note

Among the many incarnations of Laugh Now, this monumental work on steel stands as one of the most powerful and conceptually accomplished. Executed for Banksy’s landmark Barely Legal exhibition in Los Angeles in 2006, it demonstrates the artist at the height of his early maturity, revisiting one of his defining images while fundamentally transforming its meaning through the choice of material.

The familiar chimpanzee hangs beneath his placard proclaiming, “Laugh now, but one day we’ll be in charge.” Few slogans in contemporary art have achieved such universal recognition. At once humorous and quietly threatening, it speaks for those dismissed, underestimated or excluded, while hinting that every established order eventually gives way to another. Like much of Banksy’s work, the image functions simultaneously as satire, prophecy and social commentary.

Here, however, the support is inseparable from the message. Painted directly onto an industrial steel panel, the chimpanzee no longer appears isolated against a neutral background. Steel evokes factories, warehouses, construction sites and urban infrastructure—the very physical framework upon which modern society is built. Unlike canvas, which belongs to the traditions of painting, steel belongs to the world of labor, engineering and institutional power. Banksy deliberately collapses these worlds, allowing the material itself to reinforce the social critique.

The surface possesses an austere, almost architectural presence. Its cool grey tone recalls concrete, armored vehicles and industrial machinery, lending the image an authority that softer supports cannot achieve. The monkey appears less like a cartoon character than a warning stenciled onto the fabric of the modern city. His prophecy feels permanent, as though sprayed onto a factory wall rather than painted for a gallery.

Throughout his career Banksy has repeatedly chosen found materials whose histories enrich the imagery they carry. Doors, salvaged wood, market stalls, cardboard and metal panels all retain traces of public life before becoming artworks. Rather than treating the support as passive, Banksy transforms it into an active participant in the narrative. Here, the steel sheet bears the memory of manufacturing and commerce, reinforcing the work’s meditation on labor, class and institutional authority.

The monkey occupies a singular place within Banksy’s visual vocabulary. Drawing upon the tradition of singerie, in which monkeys imitate human behavior, Banksy reverses the convention by exposing the absurdity of humanity itself. The chimpanzee is not an object of ridicule but a surrogate for ordinary people: patient, anonymous and quietly resilient. His lowered posture suggests exhaustion, yet his clenched fists betray an unwavering resolve. The revolution, Banksy implies, often begins not with the powerful but with those whom society scarcely notices.

“You paint 100 chimpanzees and they still call you a guerrilla artist.”

The significance of this work is further heightened by its inclusion in Barely Legal, arguably the most important exhibition of Banksy’s career. Staged in a derelict warehouse on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, the exhibition marked his full-scale American debut and propelled him from celebrated street artist to an international cultural phenomenon. The industrial steel panels created for the exhibition assembled many of his defining images—Bomb Hugger, Kissing Coppers and Laugh Now—forming an almost monumental anthology of the themes that had come to define his practice.

Among these works, Laugh Now occupies a privileged position. It encapsulates Banksy’s enduring concern with power, inequality and the fragile relationship between authority and resistance. Four years later, this prophecy would find its grandest realization in Devolved Parliament, where chimpanzees finally assume control of the House of Commons. Yet the seed of that extraordinary painting is already present here, contained within the quiet confidence of a single anonymous ape.

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This unique work therefore represents far more than another version of one of Banksy’s most celebrated images. It is perhaps the definitive synthesis of form, material and message. By placing his most iconic social allegory upon one of the defining materials of the industrial age, Banksy transforms an unforgettable piece of street iconography into a timeless reflection on power itself. In the end, the steel may symbolize permanence, but the monkey reminds us that no system, however solid it appears, lasts forever.