A Little Context:

I've spent a lot of time in foreign countries (and at home) searching out street art by the artist Invader. By using the app Flash Invaders, created in part by him, I have successfully found and "flashed" 254 installations across 11 different cities scoring 10180 points. While I rank low when compared to many of his fans (at the time of writing this I am currently ranked #9645 in the world), I have successfully found his art in San Diego, New York, Paris, Versailles, London, Malaga, Faro, Los Angeles, Ravenna, Rome and Barcelone. The following is a brief account of my experiences looking for his artwork.

VRS_21 > 2017 > 40 Points

In the fall of 2019, I traveled through the United Kingdom and France with my parents and brother. Towards the end of our trip we made a visit to Versailles. This excited me for different reasons than most. I couldn't wait to search out and find the iconic mosaics of Invader. Don't get me wrong, visiting the Palace of Versailles was great, albeit crowded, but I was much more interested in capturing images of street art by my favorite artist.

I vividly remember scrolling through Instagram in 2017 and getting daily updates on the "Invasion" happening in Versailles. The audacity of a street artist cementing tiles in and around the Palace of Versailles, not to mention inside the gardens. I still remember the image of a camouflaged mosaic placed discretely on a wall INSIDE the gardens. He did this in 2017.

I'm fairly certain that by the time I got there in 2019 his most brazenly placed pieces had been removed. I know for sure that one of them on the outside walls of the palace was gone. VRS_21 was not one of those pieces. In fact it was a good walk away from the palace. It is one of my favorites from this trip and scored me 40 additional points. The stressed out father pushing a stroller and the child being pushed separately by her mother only adds to the image I captured of a crowned skull sitting atop a stack of books and bread.