Sunday, April 5, 2009

In Praise Of Invader


I'm sure some of you will be familiar with the work of Invader. I first noticed his stuff when I was staying in Paris for a summer a few years ago. I was walking around the Marais with some friends, and we spotted a small mosaic in the shape of an alien from the famous video game Space Invaders.


As soon as we had seen one of these mosaics, we began to see them everywhere. I eventually found out that the artist had placed them all over Paris, as sort of a large scale scavenger-hunt game.


I was also told that people had started to imitate Invader (like any good artist) and had started making their own mosaics. Usually I'd say that this would be annoying for any artist, but Invader seems like the kind of guy that would encourage a massive proliferation of space invader aliens all around the world.


After checking Invader's website, I discovered that he has been placing these invaders all over the world. According to Wikipedia, he has been putting up these mosaics since 1998, and has done so in over 35 cities around the world.


As you can see from the map above, Invader has never visited the Middle East. Do you think we could get him to throw up a few space invaders around Dubai? Would anyone notice? I guess we might see them if they were in malls, or maybe around Bastakiya or JBR Walk, but anything on Sheikh Zayed Road would need to be pretty massive to be noticed.

Maybe one of the art galleries in town could have an exhibition of his stuff? He's put on exhibitions before, and we've currently got some of Futura's work here in town, so why not?

So if anyone knows Invader, or anyone knows anyone who runs a gallery and would be interested in contacting him for an exhibition, leave a comment below. It'd be awesome to see some of Invader's work here in Dubai

2 comments:

  1. This is impressive...
    My sister is a graphic designer but this beats her 'purple pen strikes again' (written in purple)...hands down ;-)

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  2. Purple pen strikes again? Sounds interesting, send me through some pics! We could get a global underground movement started!

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