I first saw them in the touristy districts of Paris around areas like Les Halles and Châtelet. Then I started seeing them closer to where I was based, in Montmartre. On my travels to Slovenia, I found Space Invaders in the capital city of Ljubljana, and again in London. The French street artist who went by the pseudonym Space Invader had been hard at work.
Preparing his gaming-inspired mosaics in his studio, Space Invader would travel from city to city, “invading” them with his unique artworks – some constructed from tiles, others from Rubik’s Cubes.
To date he has invaded cities from Paris to New York to Istanbul, and even Perth and Melbourne. Paris alone has more than 700 Space Invader mosaics, although some have been destroyed – chipped off by the owners of “invaded” buildings who see the mosaics as graffiti, or by regular folk after a souvenir.
I spent a month living in Paris to improve my French, and in my time there I also went searching for Space Invader’s mosaics. It wasn’t particularly hard – I’d often run into them by chance. With my camera at hand, these were mosaics I encountered during the month of July.
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