Banksy | Welcome Mat

Banksy (b. c.1974)
Welcome Mat

The Welcome Mat is one of Banksy's most quietly devastating objects — a functional doormat printed with the word WELCOME in the standard typographic convention of the genre, with one modification: the letters are formed from the silhouettes of human figures, arranged in the crouching, desperate postures of people crossing borders, hiding in vehicles, or simply trying to survive. The doormat that invites you in is made from the bodies of people who were not invited in.

As a functional object deployed as fine art, the Welcome Mat connects directly to the tradition of the readymade and the conceptual object — the thing whose meaning is transformed entirely by the context in which it is encountered. On a gallery wall, it is a work of political art. On the floor of a home, it would perform its critique every time someone wiped their feet. The best version of this work is the one you live with.

Banksy's engagement with migration and border politics has been one of the most sustained in his practice — from the Calais wall paintings to his Mediterranean rescue boat to the Glastonbury 2025 Migrant Boat print also available through the gallery. The Welcome Mat is the most domestically intimate of these works, the one that brings the subject into the private space of the home rather than the public space of the wall.

Available through Creed Gallery, Ascot, for collectors across Berkshire, Surrey, and London. Private viewings by appointment.