15 Buildings Full of Butterflies (Street Art by Mantra)

A field guide painted across rooftops, towers and city walls.

In Little Rock, a cracked specimen case glows above the street. A rooftop in Miami becomes an entomology drawer. In Houston, a high-rise becomes a vertical butterfly case. French artist Mantra makes some of nature’s smallest creatures impossible to overlook.

Mantra is the name used by Youri Cansell, a French painter and naturalist born in 1987. His fascination with entomology grew from memories of his childhood garden.

The cabinet motif carries a quiet tension. A collection can preserve knowledge, but it can also suggest a future in which pinned specimens are our only encounters with these species.

He often paints freehand, pairing close observation with the physical demands of walls this large.

Follow Mantra: Instagram · Official website

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The Nine — By Mantra in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA 🇺🇸

At night, the painted case seems to sit inside the building. Cracks run across the false glass, while a yellow swallowtail pulls the eye from several blocks away.

💡 Nerd Fact: Completed in November 2020 on the east wall of Ottenheimer Market Hall at 400 President Clinton Avenue, the mural’s title carries two meanings: it refers to nine emblematic Arkansas butterflies and honors the Little Rock Nine, the students who integrated Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Read the project story.

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The Miami Collection — By Mantra in Downtown Miami, Florida, USA 🇺🇸

From the street, this painting on the parking-garage roof at 200 South Biscayne Boulevard is almost hidden. From the towers around Southeast Financial Center, an entire rooftop opens like an entomology drawer among the traffic and glass.

Completed in December 2024, the mural covers about 35,000 square feet and includes the endangered Miami blue butterfly, native to South Florida. Mantra spent more than 400 hours on it, using about 200 gallons of paint and working with rollers but without a grid or projection. See how it was made.

💡 Nerd Fact: The Miami blue was believed extinct in 1992, but a population was found at Bahia Honda State Park seven years later. That population disappeared by 2010; the Florida Museum lists the butterfly’s only known wild populations in the Key West and Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuges.

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The Houston Collection — By Mantra in Houston, Texas, USA 🇺🇸

Houston flips the cabinet upright. Four of the mural’s eight butterflies descend along a narrow concrete strip between two grids of office windows, turning the architecture into part of the display.

At 233 feet, or 71 meters, the mural asks the viewer to read tiny wing markings at the scale of a high-rise. Painted in March 2024 at 1010 Lamar Street and curated by Street Art for Mankind, it presents eight emblematic butterflies from Texas and Houston. The idea extends the “butterfly effect” to social and environmental choices: a small action can travel much farther than expected. Read Harris County’s project note or view Mantra’s official project.

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Là où fleurit l’émerveillement — By Mantra in Versailles, France 🇫🇷

Here the cabinet gives way to a living garden. Butterflies settle among clover, purple flowers and soft circles of light, while real windows interrupt the wall-sized scene and the shallow-focus background makes it feel like a close-up photograph.

The imagery grew from photographs Mantra took in his parents’ garden in Metz. Painted entirely in acrylic over eight days in 2020, the mural remains visible at 18 Allée Gabriel Fauré. That personal starting point makes the wall feel less like a survey and more like a memory enlarged to the height of a building. Read Quai 36’s official project record.

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A Kinglet Journey — By Mantra in Brooklyn, New York, USA 🇺🇸

A tiny bird becomes the guide through a wall-sized habitat. A male Ruby-crowned Kinglet perches above mushrooms and woodland plants, and the real windows break through the painted scene like small observation points.

The mural, dated November 4, 2022, was created at 90 South 4th Street for the Audubon Mural Project with the Fungi Foundation. It brings fauna, flora and fungi into one connected system—a useful key to Mantra’s work, where the subject is never only the animal but the web that keeps it alive. Read Audubon’s field notes.

💡 Nerd Fact: A Ruby-crowned Kinglet may lay up to 12 eggs. Although each egg weighs only about one-fiftieth of an ounce, a complete clutch can weigh as much as the female herself.

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La colección de Ontinyent — By Mantra in Ontinyent, Spain 🇪🇸

A blank end wall becomes a wood-framed cabinet, complete with pale backing paper and shadows beneath the wings. The trees in front strengthen the illusion, making the painted butterflies look as if they are stored just behind the branches.

Mantra painted the mural freehand at Avenida Vicente Gironés 1 in May 2022 for the MurArt festival, curated by Dull Studio. View the official project.

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Nature morte du Morpho — By Mantra in Jacó Beach, Costa Rica 🇨🇷

The painted blue morpho is so large that one wing becomes a field of electric blue. Unlike the pale museum cases, this one sits among painted leaves, roots and forest-floor shadows.

The work was painted freehand for Artify Jacó in February 2019, though it has since been painted over. Its French title translates roughly as “Still Life of the Morpho,” keeping the unease of the specimen case even in a dense habitat. View Mantra’s official project.

💡 Nerd Fact: A blue morpho’s wings contain brown pigment. The blue comes from microscopic grooves in its wing scales that scatter light and reflect blue hues, rather than from blue pigment.

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The Wynwood Collection — By Mantra in Miami, Florida, USA 🇺🇸

Wood-grain frames, cream paper and precise drop shadows make the insects feel mounted against the building. On the adjacent black wall, real windows line up like empty spaces in the same archive.

Mantra completed the freehand mural at 127 NW 27th Street in December 2022, with Justkids for Block Capital Group. Every butterfly represented in the collection can be found in Miami. View the official project.

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Aves de Bogotá — By Mantra in Bogotá, Colombia 🇨🇴

Mantra’s naturalist eye is not limited to insects. Here a column of vividly colored birds climbs a tall wall, with the smallest yellow bird near the top and the larger birds anchoring the composition near street level.

Painted freehand in December 2017 at Calle 24 No. 7-74, the mural was produced with Dmental Graffiti Pro for Idartes. The subject changes, but Mantra retains the clarity of a field-guide illustration. View the official project.

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La Collezione di Fimon — By Mantra in Fimon, Italy 🇮🇹

This small rural building could almost pass for a natural-history outpost. Wildflowers blur the foreground, hills rise behind it, and the painted collection sits inside the same landscape Mantra studied.

During the project, he observed most of the selected species directly in front of the wall in Arcugnano. Painted freehand in May 2023 with Associazione Jeos and the City of Arcugnano, the finished mural became a portrait of the Veneto ecosystem rather than a collection imported from somewhere else. Read the artist’s spring field diary or view Mantra’s official project.

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The Ode of Collapse — By Mantra in Turin, Italy 🇮🇹

This time there is no orderly cabinet. Wings overlap, bodies tumble and one huge blue butterfly stretches across the middle of the facade. The loss of order is the point.

Painted freehand in July 2019 at Via Parma 24 in Turin’s Aurora district, the mural was curated by Lavazza for TOward 2030 and interprets UN Sustainable Development Goal 13: Climate Action. The fallen butterflies turn biodiversity loss into a facade-wide image of collapse. View Mantra’s official project.

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The Bushwick Collection — By Mantra in Brooklyn, New York, USA 🇺🇸

After dark, Denizen’s glass-walled common corridors become illuminated compartments. Mantra painted a butterfly collection extending across seven floors on the corridor walls, so the building’s real interior lights complete the illusion.

The freehand mural was completed in June 2018 at Denizen, 54 Noll Street, and was curated by ODA for the residential complex. It is an especially effective use of existing architecture: the building supplies the cabinet before Mantra paints a single wing. View Mantra’s official project.

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A Poplar Admiral Journey — By Mantra in Brædstrup, Denmark 🇩🇰

An orange butterfly rests among green leaves and seed pods, with its underside rendered as carefully as the bright upper wing. The close crop makes a wall feel like a moment of field observation.

Painted freehand in May 2023 and curated by Kunstbureauet Kolossal, the mural brings three butterfly species found in Denmark into one habitat: male and female large coppers, male and female poplar admirals, and a female large white. Mantra described it as a continuation of the ecosystem-focused mural series he began in Versailles in 2020. Read the curator’s project notes or view Mantra’s official project.

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Mariposas del Yucatán — By Mantra in Cancún, Mexico 🇲🇽

Lit against the night, this tall case reads almost like a real museum display placed outdoors. The blue morpho at its center holds the composition together, surrounded by smaller red, black, white and blue specimens.

Mantra painted the installation freehand for Proyecto Panorama in March 2019. The case presents a selection of butterflies found across the Yucatán Peninsula, connecting the collection directly to its setting. The compact format shows that he does not need a tower to create scale; the contrast between the case and the trees does the work. View the official project.

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Der Goldener Scheckenfalter — By Mantra in Heidelberg, Germany 🇩🇪

A single marsh fritillary wraps around the corner of a pale building, its wings spread toward the street. Pedestrians and bicycles at ground level show its scale.

Painted freehand in July 2022 at Uferstraße 5 in Heidelberg-Neuenheim, the mural was part of “Perceiving Extinction,” a collaboration between Heidelberg University’s “Umwelten – Umbrüche – Umdenken” research network and Metropolink. The threatened marsh fritillary was chosen to focus attention on biodiversity loss. Read Heidelberg University’s project note.

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Which one is your favorite?