This artwork is one of Banksy’s shortest and most cheeky lines aimed at American symbols.

It appeared in May 2010 on the wall of a worn industrial building in Long Island City, in the Queens borough of New York. In the image is a small girl. On her head sits the familiar spiked crown of the Statue of Liberty, and she wears a garment several sizes too big that echoes the statue’s classic robe. She stands on a makeshift pedestal. But there is no torch in her hand. Instead, one hand is raised to her face, picking her nose.

This single gesture builds the whole piece. The Statue of Liberty is one of the most reproduced symbols in the world, and its whole function rests on being permanent and dignified: copper, iron, granite, a pose held for more than a century. Banksy takes that monument and replaces it with the everyday, faintly rude gesture of a bored child. Grandeur turns, in an instant, into childish mischief.

The location reinforces this reading. The real Statue of Liberty stands in New York harbour, positioned to be seen by people arriving by ship; it is the first sign of a promise, an invitation. Banksy’s version stands far from the harbour, in the industrial part of Queens, on a wall no tourist would ever pass. It would be hard to show the distance between where a promise is pictured and where it is actually lived any more clearly than this.

This piece sums up Banksy’s approach to national myths: he does not tear the monument down, he simply treats it with as little seriousness as a child would. And that is often more effective than demolition.