NO LOITERING

Catalogue Note

Created as part of Banksy’s 2008 New Orleans intervention, No Loitering depicts a solitary young man seated beneath an existing municipal NO LOITERING sign. The figure appears withdrawn and inactive, his head lowered and his hands resting between his knees. By placing him directly beneath the prohibition, Banksy turns an ordinary piece of urban regulation into part of the composition: the sign no longer simply controls the use of public space but appears to address the individual painted below it.

The work belongs to Banksy’s recurring interest in the regulation of public space and the way authority is communicated through signs, barriers and instructions. The apparent simplicity of the intervention depends upon the relationship between the painted figure and the existing street furniture. The young man is doing little more than occupying a small area of pavement, yet the sign above him immediately defines that presence as potentially undesirable. Banksy exposes the social assumptions embedded within an otherwise commonplace instruction, inviting questions about who is permitted to remain in public space and whose presence is regarded as a problem.

Its setting in post-Katrina New Orleans gives the image additional resonance. Three years after the hurricane, displacement, homelessness, poverty and the uneven reconstruction of neighborhoods remained highly visible across the city. Banksy does not refer explicitly to Katrina in this particular work, but the image of a marginalized figure apparently prohibited from simply remaining where he is acquires greater significance within that environment. As with several works from the New Orleans campaign, the surrounding city is therefore not merely a backdrop: the existing architecture, signage and social circumstances become integral components of the work.