Invader is the pseudonym of a French urban artist, whose work is modelled on the
crude pixellation of 1970s–1980s 8-bit video games. He took his name from the 1978 arcade
game Space Invaders, and much of his work is composed of square ceramic tiles inspired by
video game characters.
He define himself as an UFA, an Unidentified Free Artist. He chose Invader as his
pseudonym and he always appears behind a mask. By this way he can visit his own
exhibitions without any visitors knowing who he really is even if he stands a few steps away
from them. Since 1998, Invader has developed a large scale project, code name: Space
Invaders. The Space Invaders project is first of all about liberating Art from its usual alienators
that museums or institutions can be. But it is also about freeing the Space Invaders from their
video games TV screens and to bring them into the physical world. Everything started with
the day he decided to give a material appearance to pixelization through ceramic tiles, tiles
been the perfect material to display these pieces directly on the walls. Then he had the idea of
deploying his creatures on the walls of Paris and soon after in cities around the globe. Each of
these unique pieces becoming the fragment of a tentacular installation.
His invasion strategy is organised on detailed process through he explore international
densely populated urban areas and “invade” them. Usually, he displays 20 to 50 pieces per
city. Sometimes it happens that he returns several times in the same city, deploying different
“invasion waves” as he likes to call them. His philosophy is “Anytimes, Anywhere”.
The reason he choose the Space Invaders as a central figure for his project is that in
his own eyes, they represent the perfect icons of our time, a time where digital technologies
are the heartbeat of our world.
As these creatures are made of pixels they are in some sorts ready-made for tile
reproduction. Finally, their names are literally predestined for the project he has pioneered:
they are “Space Invaders!”.
Choosing the placement of his mosaics is an essential part of the invasion and it is a
very subjective decision. He needs to identify the neuralgic points of the cities he visit.
Beacause it takes a lot of time as a scouting process he often compares it as urban
acupuncture.
By developping several techniques Invader can adapt himself to different situations
such as the time and the place of the invasion, the size of the mosaic, the height of the wall, in
order to be the quickest and the most discrete possible. He uses cement or extremely effective
and innovative glues to fix the pieces on the wall.
On December 30th 1998, he invaded the Louvre Museum, with the help of a
photographer, he installed ten space invaders and therefore he became the only living artist
exhibited at the Louvre. Some of them remained several years in place while others were
discovered and removed rapidly.
In 2007, he wanted to create underwater sculptures. Five years later, after he was
technically ready to undergo with this project, he discovered the work of Jason de Caires who
had just joined one of the gallery that was representing Invader.
He decided not to venture into the territory of Caires and wrote him an email about
the coincidence. He replied Invader that he was currently working on a series of new
underwater sculptures and that he would love to partner together.
This is how three space invaders ended up installed at the bottom of the Cancun Bay!
If the Cancun Bay is the lowest point on Earth where you can find his works, the
highest location of his space invader is even more surprisingly: the highest piece of Invader
is SPACE2 which is installed in the ISS (International Space Station) since 2015. Everything
started in 2013, during Art4space screening, members of the European Space Agency
discover that he managed to send a mosaic in space with his own resources.
After the spot was found, on March 12th 2015, Space2 was installed on the wall of the
Columbus module and become the first work of art exhibited in space.
He is still very active in the streets, trying to install at least every week a new piece.