Across Paris, ‘Invader’ unleashes his iconic art
It all began down a narrow cobblestone road near Place de la Bastille.
An artist affixed a mosaic of a Martian from the pioneering 1978 video game Space Invaders to a wall. He used square bathroom tiles that resembled pixels.
Within the year, he had stuck 146 more to monuments, bridges and sidewalks. He was cementing a mosaic to a church wall when the police arrested him for the first time. He was not caught when he stuck 10 up inside the Louvre.
“I was invading public space with a mosaic of a small character whose role is to invade,” said the artist, who goes by the street name Invader, during an interview in a private room of a small gallery exhibiting his work in Paris. “I had found my thing, like the great artists who found their style.”
A quarter-century later, it is hard to go more than a few blocks in much of Paris without spotting an Invader mosaic — if you look.
One peers down from a perch near the top of the Eiffel Tower. The silver eyes of another glint from the fountain in the Place du Châtelet. A red-eyed beast glowers near the Pompidou Art Gallery.
Along with Haussman apartment buildings and bridges spanning the Seine, Invader’s work has become an essential part of Paris’ aesthetic. They are an intimate part of the lives of some locals; many have formed volunteer teams to repair the damaged and replace the missing, and others plan their weekends and vacations around finding them.
His work is still technically illegal; the fear of arrest is why he first took a pseudonym. (His anonymity has since become an intrinsic part of his artistic identity, and he agreed to be interviewed only if his real name was not used.) But the Hôtel de Ville, Paris’ city hall, put the artist’s work on the cover of its poster advertising an exhibition celebrating street art. Mayor Anne Hidalgo called the artist herself to request permission.
“What will happen the next time the police stop me on the street at 4 a.m.?” said Invader, who has spent 10 nights in jail in Paris for vandalism, but has never been formally charged. “Will they ask for an autograph or arrest me?”
His invasions have targeted the bottom of the Caribbean Sea and 22 miles up into the Earth’s atmosphere, using a white balloon before such a thing raised suspicion. In 2019, a copy he made of his Astro Boy mosaic, which he had put up years earlier on a bridge in Tokyo, sold for $1.12 million at an auction.
Last month, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet sent him an email declaring he was a fan and offering to take one of his works to the moon.
Many love the artist’s original concept that offers both nostalgia and a creepy prescience. Then there is his sheer tenacity: He has installed more than 4,000 pieces in 32 countries, including around 1,500 in Paris.
“Who embodies Paris the most? Invader,” said Nicolas Laugero Lasserre, an expert on street art and one of four curators of the city hall show.
Mystery is part of his allure, but Invader offered up a few personal details: He grew up in a suburb of Paris, a creative kid with a darkroom in the house, and graduated from the famed École des Beaux-Arts. He is “close to 50.” He sells copies of his mosaics at shows and auctions, and self-publishes books.
Over the years, his subject matter has expanded to include cultural and historical references. On the Rue de Louvre hangs Invader’s own Mona Lisa. Above the spot where Sorbonne students led protests in 1968 looms an invader with a raised fist. From a walled-in second-floor window, an elegant Nina Simone looks down on the jazz bar where she once performed.
“I’m part of the architecture and the landscape of Paris,” said Invader, who travels by scooter around the city. “And it’s something that is extraordinarily exciting for me.”