How, for 2024 Paris Olympics visitors, Invader – France’s Banksy – will offer ‘another way of discovering’ the city through his mosaic street art
- Likened to British street artist Banksy, Invader has marked cities from London to Hong Kong with his hallmark pixel art depicting Star Wars, Spider-Man and more
- In Paris his footprint is bigger than ever, with an exhibition and art-finding phone game for fans. What surprises await as millions ‘invade’ for the Olympics?
For the Paris Olympics, it could almost be a new sport: score points by hunting down mosaics that a mystery artist who calls himself “Invader” has cemented to walls across France’s capital, the world – including Hong Kong – and even had carried aloft to the International Space Station.
Vincent Giraud, one of the artist’s Parisian fans, is already an avid player. He downloaded Invader’s addictive FlashInvaders mobile-phone game that awards points to users who find and photograph the colourful and quirky pieces of pixellated art.
Quickly hooked, Giraud has in just a year already tracked down 1,565 of them, accumulating so many points that he has rocketed into the leader board’s top 1,000, out of more than 360,000 players.
“In a few months I found and flashed all those in Paris,” says Giraud, whose gaming name is Vince-Vader. Hunting for Invader mosaics, looking up and around for them on walls, pavements, bridges and even atop the Eiffel Tower, is “another way of discovering the city”, he says.
When Olympic visitors flock in their millions to Paris for the Games – which will take place from July 26 to August 11 – they’ll be crowding onto the turf of France’s most international, invasive and intriguing contemporary street artist. It will be one invasion coming face to face with another.
