00:00the elusive british street artist known as banksy has finally been identified or so it appears
00:06for the uninitiated banksy is a nom de guerre that has rocketed a simple man to man myth and
00:13legend he's a guerrilla artist whose works suddenly materialize overnight on street corners
00:18or buildings you've no doubt seen the girl with the balloon it's arguably his most famous work
00:23now he's been operating for decades but no one knew his true identity like batman but artsy
00:28now reuters thinks they have riddled it out the prolific and undeniably cool banksy is a 52 year
00:36old man named robin gunningham that is a name that has long been rumored to be the secretive rock star
00:43artist but reuters did the digging figuring out that gunningham legally changed his name to david
00:49jones in 2008 statistically one of the most popular names in the uk banksy seemingly hoped it would help
00:55him hide in plain sight and it worked for a while leads to his real identity pretty much dried up
01:00but the news outlet was able to track the artist's movements during a visit to ukraine in 2022
01:05interviewing witnesses who say they saw him spray painting a building there they spoke to a dozen
01:10banksy insiders who refused to identify him but gave them enough clues to pursue all of which led them
01:17to unearth one picture of the real deal banksy from way back in 2004 i'll link to the post story
01:23so you
01:23can see the photo for yourself now another little wrinkle in this whole thing involves musician robert
01:29delnaja he's a fairly well-known member of the british band massive attack and for years the rumor mill
01:34suggested he was banksy he and banksy were known to have grown up in the city of bristol around the
01:39same
01:39time and he himself is a graffiti artist so you can see why those rumors started well it turns out
01:45that
01:46while delnaja isn't banksy he is a collaborator who joined banksy on at least one occasion in ukraine
01:53back in 2022 the trip that kind of blew this whole story out of the water
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