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?”
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