Created in 2002, Banksy’s Barcode Leopard also known simply as Barcode shows a leopard breaking free from a cage fashioned out of a wheeled barcode. Executed in his signature stencil style, the work combines sharp visual wit with layered social critique.

On the surface, the piece comments on the exploitation of animals for entertainment, but the symbolism reaches further. The barcode stands for consumerism, commodification and control, while the leopard embodies freedom and the untameable force of nature. Together they highlight the uneasy balance between the wild and the manufactured, the natural and the commercialised.

As one of Banksy’s early works, Barcode Leopard endures as a powerful metaphor for environmental and societal entrapment and remains among his most recognisable images.