Grappling Hook

Created for The Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem, Grappling Hook is – in Banksy’s own words – a “military grade grappling hook and combined spiritual ornament." The sculpture turns a three-pronged steel grappling hook into a crucifix, attached to a 4.4m (14’ 5”) piece of rope. Grappling Hook comes with a special cardboard box with hand-stencilled artworks. It was released in 2017 as a signed edition of 26.

The Walled Off Hotel’s gift shop sells souvenirs by Banksy to guests staying at the hotel and online. It was the first time in close to four years that Banksy’s artwork was available on the primary market. While most of its merchandise are open edition, Grappling Hook was a limited-edition offering and was quickly snatched up after the shop opened.

Like many other pieces for the Walled Off Hotel’s shop, and indeed the hotel itself, Grappling Hook addresses the conflict between Israel and Palestine. But while other souvenirs have a comparatively simpler concept, such as a reproduction of the hotel’s key fob or artworks made from pieces of the West Bank wall, Grappling Hook offers a more metaphorical approach. As the barrier divides two holy sites in Christianity – The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Palestine, and The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Old Town Jerusalem, Israel – Grappling Hook can be seen as a tongue-in-cheek approach of, literally, scaling the West Bank wall and, symbolically, of art overcoming the divide put in place by religion, politics and oppression.

Grappling Hook follows a long line of artworks that Banksy has created in Bethlehem. Over a decade before he designed Walled Off Hotel, he sprayed the first Love Is In The Air (Flower Thrower) graffiti piece in the city in 2003, which also addresses two of Banksy’s favourite contrasting themes: peace and violence.