The Global Ambitions of Invader’s Street Art | The New Yorker

For twenty-seven years, Invader has been decorating the walls, bridges, monuments, tunnels, sidewalks, staircases, railings, gates, curbs, benches, bollards, posts, poles, pipes, columns, fountains, pools, docks, seawalls, roofs, chimneys, medians, bus stops, train stations, storefronts, bookshops, and bars of Paris and beyond with playful mosaics. They have depicted everything from winged insects to cartoon characters and slot-machine fruits. Invader calls his interventions “invasions,” and the mosaics themselves are known as “invaders.” He has executed more than four thousand in a hundred and seventy-two cities in thirty-two countries, grazing permanence in the traditionally ephemeral world of street art.