Space Invader

Invader (French, b.1969), also known as Space Invader, is an Urban artist originally based in Paris.

He affixes mosaic images of characters from the 1970s video game “Space Invaders" in cities around the world.

An introduction to the anonymous French artist whose ‘invasion waves’ have adorned the city streets of more than 30 countries around the world Born in 1969, Invader is the pseudonym of a certain graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Using the 1978 arcade game Space Invaders as the subject for an ongoing project, Invader makes images from ceramic tiles.

These works resemble mosaics or pixilations. He cites Space Invaders as ‘the perfect icons of our time, a time where digital technologies are the heartbeat of our world’. Using ‘guerrilla’ tactics he calls ‘invasion waves’, Invader installs 20 to 50 of these ‘Space Invaders’ in public places within targeted cities.

He describes this project as ‘urban acupuncture’. These ‘invasions’ began in Paris in 1998 and quickly spread to other cities in France. His works have now appeared in more than 30 countries around the world, most famously on the ‘D’ of the Hollywood sign, placed there on New Year’s Eve 1999.