Who Left That on the Wall? A Field Guide to Paris’s Mosaic Artists

 Once I realized that not every little mosaic alien on a Paris wall was an Invader, I discovered an entirely new game: learning to recognize the artists by their visual signatures.

Here is my quick field guide for my next Paris walk.

Invader: Look for the Pixels

The best-known name is, of course, Invader. Since beginning his Paris project in 1998, the anonymous French artist has installed ceramic mosaics inspired by the pixelated graphics of early video games, especially the 1978 Space Invaders arcade game.

Look for: pixelated aliens, video-game characters and increasingly elaborate images constructed from square tiles.

Website: Invader’s official site is Space Invaders.

Morèje: The Mosaic Pioneer

Morèje, or Jérôme Gulon, is particularly important historically. He began incorporating mosaics into urban art in the 1980s, before Invader’s project began.

His small mosaics are often designed to interact with their surroundings and may incorporate portraits, photographs, text and other materials.

Look for: more traditional tesserae, portraits and compositions that respond to the history or character of their location.

Website: Morèje’s official website.

Mr Djoul: Look Closely at the Aliens

Mr Djoul is where identification gets tricky. He also creates little mosaic aliens, but they belong to his own visual vocabulary.

Look for: small humanoid aliens, often with particularly noticeable eyes. If it looks vaguely like an Invader but something seems different, it is worth investigating before assigning the work to Invader.

I have not found a personal website for Mr Djoul that I can confidently verify as official, so I would rather not give him an incorrect one.

A2: Hearts, Love and Anarchy

Once you learn the symbol of A2, the work becomes much easier to recognize.

A2 means A²: Amour et Anarchie, or Love and Anarchy. The anonymous Parisian artist repeatedly uses a heart containing the anarchist A and also creates imagery associated with figures such as Louise Michel and Emma Goldman.

Look for: hearts, the anarchist A, Louise Michel, Emma Goldman and the character Barbanar.

Website: A2 Street Art. There is also an excellent illustrated interview with the artist at Zinc Paris.

MifaMosa: Look at the Street Name

MifaMosa turns finding street art into a word game.

The artist creates mosaics inspired by the names of the streets where they are installed. That means the artwork and the street sign often need to be read together before the joke reveals itself.

Look for: a mosaic that seems to illustrate, reinterpret or make a visual pun from the street’s name.

Stork: Look for the Birds

This one is considerably easier.

Stork places mosaic storks around the city.

Look for: the unmistakable long-legged silhouette of a stork. Some installations become even more interesting when their locations are considered collectively, turning individual mosaics into part of a larger geographical composition.

Solrac: Look to the Stars

Solrac took the idea in another direction, installing blue mosaics representing constellations.

Look for: predominantly blue compositions based on stars and constellations.

Instead of invading Paris with creatures, Solrac effectively scattered pieces of the night sky across it.

Ememem: Look Down!

Not all Paris mosaics are on walls.

Ememem repairs cracks, holes and scars in pavement with brilliantly colored ceramic mosaics. The artist calls the technique flacking.

I love the idea. A damaged piece of the city isn’t disguised. Instead, the scar becomes the artwork.

Look for: colorful mosaics fitted directly into broken pavement and masonry.

Website: Ememem’s official website.

IPDO: Look for Familiar Characters

I Pixel di Oplontis, generally abbreviated IPDO, is another name worth remembering. The artists have used recognizable popular-culture imagery, including characters inspired by the Smurfs.

Look for: colorful pixel characters and the initials IPDO.

Zigom.art: Check the Tiles

Zigom.art creates colorful pixel and mosaic characters that can also make you stop and wonder whether you have discovered an Invader.

Look more closely. One identifying feature associated with Zigom is the use of rounded tiles and a separate hexagonal tile as a signature.

And that is becoming my favorite part of this discovery.

I used to walk through Paris looking for Invaders.

Next time, I will be looking for mosaics.

An alien might be Invader or Mr Djoul. A heart might lead me to A2. A bird could reveal Stork. A peculiar picture might suddenly make sense when I read the street sign and realize I have found MifaMosa. And if I spend all my time looking up at the walls, I could walk straight over an Ememem without ever noticing it.

Paris has turned into an enormous open-air mosaic gallery.

The trick is learning where to look.

Up at the walls. Down at the pavement. Around the corner. And always at the street sign.

#ParisStreetArt #ParisMosaics #InvaderParis #MosaicStreetArt #HiddenParis #UrbanArtParis #StreetArtHunting #ParisArt #ParisDiscoveries #WalkingParis

Not Every Alien Is an Invader: Cracking the Mosaic Code of Paris

 When I first began noticing small mosaic figures attached to the walls of Paris, my immediate thought was Invader.

That is hardly surprising. Invader has made the little pixelated creatures inspired by the 1978 Space Invaders arcade game almost synonymous with Paris street art. Finding one can feel like discovering a tiny piece of a much larger game being played across the city.

But then I started looking more closely.

Not every little alien is an Invader.

In fact, there is an entire community of mosaic artists leaving their work on Paris walls, sidewalks and street corners. Some have been working with mosaics even longer than Invader. Others have taken the idea in completely different directions.

Suddenly, what I thought was one artist’s work became something much more interesting.

Before Invader: Morèje

One of the most fascinating artists I discovered is Morèje, the artistic name of Jérôme Gulon.

Gulon began introducing mosaics into urban environments in the 1980s, before Invader began his famous project in the late 1990s. His work often combines portraits or other imagery with colorful mosaic tesserae.

That changes the history a little. Invader may be the artist who made pixelated mosaics internationally famous, but mosaic street art in France has deeper roots.

Mr Djoul and His Little Aliens

Then there is Mr Djoul, a French mosaic artist whose recurring character is also a little alien.

At first glance, some of his creatures might look like distant cousins of Invader’s characters. Look longer, though, and a separate visual vocabulary begins to emerge.

Mr Djoul’s aliens often have distinctive large eyes and recognizable personalities. He reportedly began by repairing damaged Invader mosaics before developing his own body of work.

That makes identifying an alien on a Paris wall much more complicated than I originally imagined.

Alien does not necessarily equal Invader.

A2: Love and Anarchy

Another artist I particularly enjoy is the anonymous Parisian artist A2, or A².

The name has been explained as Amour et Anarchie: Love and Anarchy.

Once you know that, the imagery begins to make sense. Hearts are an important part of A2’s visual language, frequently incorporating the anarchist A. A2 has also created portraits connected with anarchist history, including Louise Michel and Emma Goldman.

Even more interestingly, works by A2 and Mr Djoul have appeared together.

Now the walls begin to feel less like isolated installations and more like conversations.

MifaMosa Turns Paris Into a Puzzle

MifaMosa adds another element I absolutely love: wordplay.

His mosaics frequently illustrate the name of the street on which they are installed.

One delightful example appears on Rue de la Perle, or “Pearl Street.” MifaMosa reinterpreted Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in mosaic.

So finding the artwork is only half the fun. You also have to understand why it belongs on that particular street.

Paris becomes a puzzle.

Storks, Stars and Sidewalk Repairs

Other artists have pushed mosaic street art even farther from the familiar pixelated alien.

Stork installs storks around Paris. Individual mosaics can even become part of larger geographical compositions when their locations are considered together.

Solrac created blue mosaics representing constellations, effectively scattering pieces of the night sky across the city.

And then there is Ememem, whose work may be my favorite conceptual twist of all.

Rather than attaching mosaics to walls, Ememem repairs cracks, holes and damaged sections of pavement with colorful ceramic pieces. The artist calls the technique flacking.

They are almost like beautiful little bandages for injured streets.

Instead of hiding the damage, the repair celebrates it.

An Entire Mosaic Ecosystem

The more I researched, the longer the list became.

There is I Pixel di Oplontis, or IPDO, whose work has included characters inspired by the Smurfs.

There is Zigom.art, with colorful figures and distinctive mosaic techniques.

There is NextMosaik, which transformed the familiar red and green figures from pedestrian signals into mosaic scenes.

And there are collaborations.

That may be the most important discovery of all.

These aren’t necessarily artists operating in completely separate worlds. Their pieces can occupy the same neighborhoods and sometimes the same walls. Artists collaborate, respond to one another and add new pieces over time.

A wall can become an informal outdoor salon.

Nearly Two Centuries in One Photograph

That brings me back to the wall that started my curiosity.

At first I was tempted to look at the collection of colorful ceramic characters and simply call them Invaders.

Now I wouldn’t.

The large green alien certainly speaks the visual language that Invader made famous, but some of the smaller pieces may belong to other artists. Without matching each installation to an artist’s catalog or knowing the precise history of the wall, assigning every mosaic to Invader would be speculation.

And I actually like that uncertainty.

There is another detail in the photograph that makes the whole scene even better.

Above the window, the stone façade carries the date 1853.

Think about that.

The building was standing more than a century before Space Invaders appeared in an arcade. Then came the visual language of early computer games, followed by artists who translated those digital pixels into ceramic tiles and carried them back into the physical streets.

In one photograph, I have nearly two centuries talking to each other:

Old Parisian masonry.

Twentieth-century arcade imagery.

Twenty-first-century street art.

Perhaps that is what I enjoy most about walking through Paris. You can visit the great museums and admire works that have been carefully preserved for centuries.

But you can also turn a corner, look up at an old stone wall and discover that the city’s newest gallery has no door, no admission fee and no little plaque telling you exactly what you’re looking at.

You have to notice it.

And now I have a new game to play when I return to Paris.

Instead of asking:

“Did I find an Invader?”

I’ll be asking:

“Whose mosaic did I just find?”

#ParisStreetArt #ParisMosaics #InvaderParis #StreetArtParis #UrbanArt #MosaicArt #HiddenParis #ParisDiscoveries #ArtInTheStreets #WalkingParis

From Bamboo in France to My Fork at Home: Travel Changed What I Notice

Travel has a funny way of changing what you notice when you come home.

While I was in France, I became fascinated by the use of bamboo and other plant-based materials in everyday objects. I noticed bamboo spoons, hotel accessories, signs and other products that could easily have been made from conventional plastic. Once I started paying attention to what things were made from, I couldn’t stop.

Now I’m back in the United States, and apparently I brought home a new habit: I’m inspecting my takeout packaging.

What looked like an entirely ordinary American takeout meal turned into a surprisingly interesting little investigation.

I turned over the food box. I examined the fork. Then I started dismantling my coffee cup.

And there was information everywhere.

The Takeout Container

The white clamshell food container looks a bit like the disposable containers we’ve used for years, but the markings tell a different story.

Molded into the bottom is the BPI compostable certification mark, accompanied by the words “Commercially Compostable Only.” There’s also an important qualification: “Facilities May Not Exist in Your Area.”

That distinction is significant. Commercially compostable doesn’t necessarily mean backyard compostable. These products are designed to break down under the controlled temperature, moisture and biological conditions available at appropriate commercial composting facilities.

So creating the container is only half of the sustainability equation. A community also needs a system capable of collecting and processing it.

Then I Looked at the Fork

At first glance, the fork looks like an ordinary disposable plastic utensil.

Look closely, however, and there is another BPI mark molded directly into the fork, along with identifying information.

That was particularly interesting because it demonstrates how difficult it can be to identify newer compostable materials simply by appearance. The fork looks and feels much like conventional plastic. Without turning it over and finding the certification mark, I would never have known there was anything different about it.

France had me examining bamboo spoons. Now, apparently, I’m examining the backs of forks.

Then There Was My Coffee Cup

The coffee cup turned out to be an entire sustainability lesson by itself because it isn’t really one object. It’s several separate components, made from different materials.

First, there is the paper cup itself.

Printed directly on it is the statement: “This cup has been redesigned with 30% recycled paper.” It also carries an FSC MIX certification mark indicating that the paper comes from FSC-certified material, recycled material and/or other controlled sources. The label specifically describes it as paper supporting responsible forestry.

So before I even reach the sleeve, the cup is telling me two things: recycled content is being incorporated into the product, and attention is also being paid to the sourcing of the paper fiber.

Then I looked at the cardboard insulating sleeve.

That has its own story printed right on it:

“Same great sleeve, less waste.”

According to the manufacturer, the sleeve contains 85% post-consumer fiber and uses 34% less paper than the original version.

I find that particularly interesting. Sustainability isn’t always about inventing an entirely new material. Sometimes it means redesigning an existing product so that it simply requires less material in the first place.

And then there’s the lid.

Unlike the cup and sleeve, the lid is a molded material that looks and feels like plastic. It has manufacturing information molded into it, but I don’t see the same obvious BPI compostability mark that appears on the food container and fork. So I shouldn’t assume that the lid belongs in the same composting stream merely because the other pieces do.

That is an important part of this story too.

One Cup Isn’t Necessarily One Piece of Trash

My coffee arrived as a single object.

But when I’m finished with it, I’m actually holding several different materials: a paper cup containing recycled fiber, a high-post-consumer-fiber cardboard sleeve, and a separate molded lid.

Add the meal and I have even more: a commercially compostable food container and a BPI-marked compostable utensil.

Suddenly, throwing everything into one trash can seems remarkably unsophisticated compared with the amount of engineering that went into making all of it.

And that brings me right back to France.

I initially noticed bamboo there because it was different enough to catch my attention. What I didn’t expect was that the experience would change the way I looked at things when I came home.

The alternatives are here, too.

Some are obvious. Some look exactly like the disposable products we’ve been using for decades. Some incorporate recycled material. Some reduce the amount of material used. Some are commercially compostable. And some components may still require an entirely different waste stream.

The information is often right there on the product.

I simply wasn’t reading it before.

Perhaps that’s one of the more unexpected souvenirs I’ve brought home from France. I went there looking carefully at buildings, landscapes, food and culture through the lens of my camera.

I came home looking just as carefully at my coffee cup.

And my takeout box.

And, yes, even my fork.

#SustainablePackaging #CompostablePackaging #BPICompostable #RecycledPaper #FSC #PostConsumerFiber #TakeoutPackaging #Sustainability #FranceTravel #TravelChangesYou