10 Facts About Invader's Hollyweed

The prints were made by Invader in response to one of his largest and most important solo exhibitions in the US, Into the White Cube, held at Over the Influence in Los Angeles, California. The exhibition offered a retrospective on the artist’s most important works, as well as new artworks made on canvas, the first time the artist engaged with the medium after his fine art education in Paris.

The prints represent two plants, the only difference being the colour of the pots, which are reminiscent of the antagonistic Super Mario characters.

The collection name is a pun staged by the artist, playing on the merging of ‘weed’, visually represented, and ‘Hollywood’.

Invader’s love for Los Angeles has been widely acknowledged, with the artist having invaded the city with over 200 public mosaics recorded to date interspersed through the city’s corners, and 11 invasion waves, one of which organised in conjunction with the 2018 exhibition.

On December the 31st 1999, the artist defied public authorities when he placed one of his Space Invaders upon the letter D of the iconic Hollywood Sign, which has become a true landmark of the city. During subsequent trips to the city, he carried on his Invasion of the American landmark by placing his mosaics on its eight other letters.

In 2010, the artist was then arrested for attempting to place another mosaic on the Hollywood sign, all the previous ones having already been removed, and was even forced to pay a fine.

Seemingly uneventful within Invader’s production, upon closer analysis these prints reveal both Invader’s defiance of public authorities in his politically charged yet playful art, as well as Invader’s commitment to producing artworks that openly engage in a dialogue with the surrounding city.

Since the early 2000s, Invader's art has expanded from its original motif of the Space Invader into new icons inspired by other 8-bit video games. The deliberately pixilated format of Invader's works are what give his works their central essence.

In November 2022 a version of Hollyweed (brown) sold for € 10,000 (£8,571) at Blanchet & Associés Auction House in Paris, the highest price achieved for a print in this series.

Explicit in it's reference to illegal drugs, Invader has never since created a more visually controversial work than this. However his art practice in general is controverisal by nature, in that he regularly 'invades' public spaces.