Invader Unleashes Art Across Paris
PARIS — 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 one to a church wall when he was arrested for the first time. He was not caught when he put 10 in 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. “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 redeyed beast glowers near the Pompidou Center art gallery.
Along with Haussmann apartment buildings and bridges over the Seine, Invader’s pieces have become an essential part of Paris’s 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 part of his artistic identity.) But the Hôtel de Ville, Paris’s
City Hall, put Invader’s work on its poster advertising an exhibition celebrating street art. Mayor Anne Hidalgo called him herself for 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. “Will they ask for an autograph or arrest me?”
Last month, the French astronaut Thomas Pesquet sent him an email, offering to take one of his works to the moon.
Invader has installed over 4,000 pieces in 32 countries, with about 1,500 in Paris.
“He’s quite sophisticated,” said Guillaume Piens, the head of the city’s spring art fair. “He uses guerrilla tactics. I love this. It’s part of the French psyche. We are absolutely rebellious people.”
Mystery is part of his allure, but Invader offered a few personal details: He grew up in a Paris suburb and graduated from the famed École des Beaux-Arts. He is “close to 50,” and a vegetarian — the only cause he has mixed into his work. 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 references.
On the Rue du Louvre hangs Invader’s own Mona Lisa, next to the electric green sign of the Duluc Detective agency — a nod to when the painting was stolen in 1911. Above the exact spot where Sorbonne students led protests in 1968 looms an invader with a raised fist. A 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, admiring his own work. “And it’s something that is extraordinarily exciting for me.”
In 2014, Invader created an app, Flash Invaders, which allows fans to compete against one another to find his pieces, scanning them with their phones for points. Two years before Pokémon Go was released, it set off a craze. Soon, diehard flashers discovered mosaics that were damaged or missing, and began to repair and replace them. Surprised, Invader sent instructions for what they call “reactivations.”
“We are just happy and proud to contribute to his oeuvre,” said Olivier Moquin, a security professional who is part of a team that has reactivated up to 300 works.
Given his celebrity, Invader is now less worried about the police than about a random fan with an iPhone who could unmask him on social media. He could unveil his pieces in galleries, but that does not interest him.
“It’s like taking a drug, or like a sexual act,” he said. “When you make a beautiful piece in the city at night, and the next day you go see it, it’s extraordinary.”
Using guerrilla tactics to capture the essence of an iconic city.