About this artwork

One of Banksy's earliest works, Laugh Now depicts a monkey wearing a sign that says "Laugh now, but one day we'll be in charge." The monkey has a sad expression, looking like he has been made a slave and is ridiculed. It was created in 2002 as a commissioned artwork for a nightclub in Brighton. It's a critique on how we perceive monkeys and ridicule them. They are our ancestors, but we want to put as much distance between us and them as possible. In movies we often paint them as unintelligent savages. It could also be a reference to how some don't believe we evolved from monkeys and mock the theory of evolution.