Banksy Floats Refugee Boat Across Crowds at Glastonbury

Artist Marina Abramović also staged an intervention, calling for seven minutes of silence in support of the festival's 2024 theme, Peace.

Crowds formed a sea of hands beneath an inflatable dinghy crewed by eight mannequins in bright orange life jackets during a set by British rock band Idles at Glastonbury Festival on Friday night.

Banksy posted a video of the dinghy on his Instagram, implicitly claiming authorship of the intervention.

Banksy's dinghy recalls a body of work by Ai Weiwei on the subject of boat people—refugees who make dangerous ocean voyages in desperate attempts at a better life. At the Biennial of Sydney in 2018, for instance, Ai showed Law of the Journey (2017), a 60-metre-long inflatable boat crowded with hundreds of figures, all made from black PVC rubber.

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Another famous artist also made an appearance at Glastonbury. Marina Abramović took to the Pyramid stage at 5.55pm on Friday evening, shortly before a performance by English singer PJ Harvey, to conduct seven minutes of silence in response to the festival's 2024 theme, Peace.

'Silence is a powerful tool that allows us to connect with ourselves and each other in ways words cannot,' Abramović said in a statement.

'At a festival like Glastonbury, where sound and energy are in constant flux, these Seven Minutes of Collective Silence offer a unique opportunity for unity and introspection. It's about being present together, experiencing the power of silence as one.'

Over 200,000 people attended Glastonbury this year. Performers included SZA, Dua Lipa, and Coldplay, who brought Back to the Future star Michael J. Fox on stage and confessed he was the reason they became a band.

Glastonbury will return in 2025 before taking a break in 2026, one of the festival's regularly scheduled fallow years that allow the farm in Somerset to recover from the crowds. —[O]