Los Asbestos: “Let Me Unsee” in Belfast

I see you, Asbestos.

The war on our minds continues apace, advertising and propaganda selling shampoo and wars and sowing confusion at such a rate that increasingly, we are willingly forgoing critical thought – willing to be triggered.

Asbestos has seen this as well and suggests that it’s all too much. Here in Belfast for The North Festival, his new masked figure the human pantoscopic, the master of surveilling, seeing all.

He is calling this new mural, “Let Me Unsee”.

“It feels like the world is bashing more and more through my eyes, filling me with more and more and more,” he tells us. “It’s all consuming, screen after screen, scroll after scroll, ad after ad, another painting, banana jelly, cat memes, peppermint fondant paint, the texture of her hair, conversations, work, war, conflict, love, lust, art, friends. Everything is new, bigger, brighter, better, faster, smoother, sexier.”

His commentary on this glut is engaging, and so are these new eye-popping visuals, virtually guaranteeing his new mural a place alongside the stream of cat memes and banana jelly that are flooding feeds.

“It’s impossible to not be enraptured by it all, but it’s bloody exhausting,” he says. “I feel I need to unsee, to switch off a few of my eyes, and to try to process fewer things. I’m overstimulated, which I love, but sometimes I just need a break.”