This piece is an elegy Banksy wrote for someone from his own community, and it is one of the rare works in his body of work that carries more grief than anger.

The story begins on 12 January 2007 in Barking, East London. A nineteen year old British graffiti writer known as “Ozone” and his friend “Wants” were killed after being struck by a train on the underground line. The deaths of the two young writers shook the London graffiti scene of the time deeply.

Ozone’s connection to Banksy dates back before his death. In Banksy’s famous “Pulp Fiction” mural on Old Street, Tarantino’s two hitmen held bananas instead of guns. At one point Ozone intervened on this wall and tagged his own signature over Banksy’s work. In street art tradition, this is less an insult than a challenge, a way of saying “let’s see what you do about it.”

After Ozone’s death, Banksy left behind an angel figure in memory of the lost writer: a winged angel wearing a bulletproof vest, holding a skull. An angel is a symbol of protection and innocence. Dressing it in body armour is a quiet way of saying how empty the idea of protection turned out to be after such a young death. The skull in its hand is a direct reference to the memento mori tradition in classical painting, the object that reminds us of mortality.

Banksy shared these words alongside the piece: “When we lost Ozone we lost a fearless graffiti writer, it turns out we also lost a pretty sharp art critic. Rest in peace Ozone.”

This sentence carries the whole meaning of the piece. Banksy is not defending someone who could be seen as disrespecting his work. On the contrary, he is recognising him as a critic. Writing over a wall on the street, in this logic, is making a comment, and Ozone’s comment has been accepted.

Ozone Angel is one of the rare moments when Banksy is not targeting political institutions, war or consumer culture. There is no opponent here, only a loss, and the artist salutes someone who chose to remain anonymous, using an equally anonymous language.