Walk around certain Paris neighborhoods and look on building walls or store gratings, and you’ll see spray-painted figures of people or animals, some with words or phrases. This genre of art--mostly stencils, not quite grafitti--came to life in France in the early 1980s. It’s now almost institutionalized, with organizations providing backing for new artists each year. Each artist has unique style: provocative women, cute animals, arrows, clever catchphrases--anything to engage with the public.

In this piece, writer Lisa Pham gives a tour of the stencil art on the streets of the 5th arrondisment. Along the way we meet various people, including the artist Jef Aerosol.