PA_606

I define myself as an UFA, an Unidentified Free Artist. I chose Invader as my pseudonym and I always appear behind a mask. Since 1998, I have developed a large scale project, code name: Space Invaders. It 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 in our physical world. Everything started the day I decided to give a material appearance to pixelization through ceramic tiles. I first wanted to create a series of "canvases" but I soon realised that tiles were the perfect material to display these pieces directly on the walls. I then had the idea of deploying my creatures on the walls of Paris and soon after in cities around the globe. Each of these unique pieces become the fragment of a tentacular installation. Little by little, I organised a detailed process by which I explore international densely populated urban areas and "invade" them. Usually, I try to display 20 to 50 pieces per city, which is already a good score. Sometimes I happen to return several times in the same city, deploying different “invasion waves” as I like to call them. The goal is to increase my score by continuously and restlessly invading new spaces. "Anytime, Anywhere" is the philosophy…I try to evolve and reinvent myself at all time while leading a precise and serious aesthetic invasion project. In my own eyes, they are 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 I have pioneered: they are “Space Invaders!”.