Luigi Mangione-inspired art has made it off digital screens and into the streets.
Pacific Northwest-based street artist subSpace, who declined to provide their real name because the artist also works as a commercial graphic designer, took to a public art wall in the Post Alley at Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington, to share a rendition of the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson earlier this month.
“Although I don’t condone murder of any sort, there was a feeling of connection with Luigi because we have all seen and witnessed the lack of empathy and humanity in our current healthcare system,” subSpace wrote to Hyperallergic. “I wanted to grab that energy and put it in a piece.”
The artist pasted a design of the Nintendo Super Mario character Luigi, who has become a de facto symbol of Mangione, holding a flame and sporting a backpack decorated with a crossed-out UnitedHealthcare logo. Japanese Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto created the iconic overalled and green-hatted character in 1983 as a brother and second-player option for the main character Mario. The Super Mario Bros Luigi is described as “heroic” but also “cowardly” on fan websites, having lived life in the shadow of Mario.
Nearby in the same alley, subSpace also pasted portraits of three young cancer patients, each bearing the words “deny,” “defend,” and “depose,” which police said were inscribed on the casings of the bullets that killed Thompson on December 4. The terms are also linked to Jay Feinman’s 2010 book Delay, Deny, Defend, which exposes how insurance companies avoid claims and has climbed to the top of bestseller lists in recent weeks.
SubSpace said nobody has attempted to cover up or remove the work so far. That section of the alley, subSpace explained, is an active wall. “Some pieces stay longer than others,” the street artist said.
Other Mangione-inspired street and protest art has also cropped up nationwide and internationally. Ahead of Mangione’s extradition to New York on Thursday, December 19, a small group of demonstrators in Pennsylvania dressed up as the green namesake character and shouted “Free Luigi.”
In a march for healthcare reform and in support of Mangione in Lower Manhattan on December 23, one demonstrator’s sign depicted a cartoon illustrating “death by denials.”
Last weekend, local media reported that a hand-painted pink billboard reading “Free Luigi Mangione” emerged along an interstate highway near Los Angeles, California. Users on X shared recent street art featuring the Luigi video game character in Alberta, Canada, and Columbus, Ohio. On Reddit, others shared images of a spray-painted wall with the phrase “Deny, Delay, Defend” in Tuscon. Another X user claimed to see a street artwork with the same words in the Dominican Republic. Hyperallergic has not been able to verify the authenticity of the latter. Some Mangione-inspired art circulating on social media has been flagged as AI-generated.
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