MAN IN A BATHTUB

An Ordinary Morning in the Ruins

In November 2022, Banksy painted a bearded man taking a bath on the exposed interior wall of a residential building in Horenka, northwest of Kyiv. The apartment block had been struck during Russian attacks in March, when Horenka stood close to the front line of the advance on the Ukrainian capital. Much of the exterior had been destroyed, leaving the private interiors of the apartments open to the street.

Against this devastation, Banksy depicts an utterly ordinary activity. An elderly man sits in a bathtub, bending forward as he scrubs his back with a brush. There are no soldiers, weapons or political slogans. The war is represented by the building itself.

The contrast is both absurd and deeply poignant. Bathing is among the most private and routine aspects of domestic life, yet here it takes place in a home whose protective exterior has literally disappeared.

When the Home Becomes the Artwork

The surviving architecture is essential to the image. Banksy painted the man directly onto the wallpaper of what had once been the apartment's bathroom. The wallpaper, broken masonry and exposed interior therefore become part of the composition rather than simply its background. Conservation research on the Ukrainian works has emphasized precisely this relationship between Banksy's flat stencil figures and the physical reality of wartime destruction.

This gives Man in a Bathtub a different emotional register from Judo Boy. There is no confrontation and no obvious victory. Instead, Banksy focuses on what war does to ordinary life. A bathroom becomes an exterior wall; a private space becomes publicly visible; an everyday ritual continues amid the remains of a home.

Banksy's film documenting the Ukraine intervention reinforces this human dimension. Alongside footage of the works being created, it shows the devastated surroundings and interviews local residents. One mother, standing with her daughter near a destroyed building, tells the camera that they have already cried so much that they have no tears left.

Preserving the Ruins

The mural was subsequently protected behind a transparent barrier as Ukrainian authorities sought to safeguard Banksy's works from weather, vandalism and theft. By February 2023, security systems had been installed around works in Horenka and other locations, with authorities describing them as war artefacts that should be preserved for Ukraine.

That description is particularly appropriate here. Preserving Man in a Bathtub means preserving more than Banksy's stencil. The damaged wall is itself evidence of the event to which the artwork responds.

Banksy did not paint the destruction. He found it already there and added something almost painfully normal: a man having a bath in what remained of his home.