Against the backdrop of Paris Fashion Week which introduced several collaborative projects between high fashion brands and big names from the art world (Dior partnered with KAWS and Takashi Murakami continued collaborating with Virgil Abloh, the new artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s menswear collection), the French capital was for the first time hit by the world’s most elusive street artist—Banksy.

Without previous announcement or warning—and to this moment without official confirmation—Parisans began to discover several new street pieces that materialized in the urban/street art galaxy of the social media universe.

The first piece was found near the Porte de la Chapelle metro station, where Paris’ official refugee centre “La Bulle,” was located until August 2017. A city within a city, it was home to a makeshift camp of some 2,700 refugees, and was dismantled an estimated 35 times before 2,000 migrants were bussed to temporary shelters. This was done as part of Emmanuel Macron’s wish to remove the refugees “off the streets, out of the woods,” as stated during his campaign.

With this in mind, Banksy revisited his “Go Flock Yourself” piece from 2008, and created a new version as commentary on the current political situation in France and throughout Europe. Depicting a black girl painting a Victorian wallpaper pattern over a swastika, the artist is commenting on the way politicians are concealing wrongdoing and potentially fascist policies.[…]

Source: Banksy Hits Paris with Sharp Political Criticism and Several Mischievous Rats