Art larger than life with JR
The young French ‘photograffeur’.
“When I was little, I didn’t really travel — from the suburbs to Paris was already a journey. I had a foreigner’s eye on the city, and I still enjoy that point of view. Then there’s the fact that one of the things that touches me most is injustice.”
Biography
JR was born in France in 1983. The artist started to be passionate to graffiti and to street art during his teenage years but he only became an artist when he suddenly found a camera on the subway, in 2011. From that moment on, he started to photoshoot the contemporary messages street artists want to communicate to their public. That’s why JR is well-known as ‘photograffeur’: forbidden undergrounds, buildings’ walls, facades and Paris’ rooftop became the main medium to express himself. In connection with that, JR’s audience is made up by non-typical museum visitors that raise the question about the real meaning of his artworks, which still remain half-hidden. Basically, JR gives freedom of interpretation to his audience who could be a real interpreter or just a single passer-by.
JR is the artist who truly exhibits throughout the streets of the world. His art is considered “Pervasive” as the artist make Parisian slum’s buildings, Middle-East walls, African broken bridges and Brazilian favelas to host his artworks. People living the area unconsciously became the subject of his artworks or kids became an artist for just a single week. JR wants to completely destroy the insuperable separation between the actor and the viewers. One of the most interesting example, which became his first major project in 2004, is the photography of the ‘banlieues riots’, atrue example of how JR tries to communicate with his audience. He photographed people faces which were then pasted up in large prints around the city.
JR is represented by the Galerie Perrotin in Paris and by other artistic venues in London, Shanghai, Geneva, and Berlin.
In 2011 the artist received the TED Prize, while in 2013 JR experienced his first retrospective at the Watari-Um Museum in Tokyo followed by the one hosted by CAC in Cincinnati and in many other international venues.
He worked in Rio de Janeiro during the 2016 Olympics. During this special event, he created Inside Out, where new gigantic sculptural installations put an emphasis on the beauty of the athletic movement which represents a global participatory event. Inside Out shows an important meaning: how people coming from different part of the world come together to share a single experience. In 2016, this participatory project allowed 320,000 people from 139 countries to take a picture and install them in museums or streets all over the world.
Emblematic Works
Portrait of a Generation (Paris, 2004–2006)
In 2006, he created Portrait of a Generation. In the bourgeois districts of Paris, he showed huge-format portraits of the 2015 suburban French riot. After a first illegal exhibition on the walls of the Cité des Bouquets, the artist moves them into the walls of the last popular East-Parisian neighborhood. When the viewer passes by them, he/she is immediately pushed to question the social and media representation of this kind of “savage” events related to a generation of people that live in Paris’ suburbs.
Face 2 Face (2007)
In 2007, JR created the biggest illegal photography exhibition ever: “Face2Face” project, in collaboration with Marco. The project consisted of showing many different portraits of Palestinians and Israelis doing the same job and putting their faces one in front of the other. The two artists created monumental format portraits which were installed on both sides of a single building’s walls, in unavoidable places in eight Israeli and Palestinian cities.
In order to create this project, Marco and JR visited the Middle-East to understand reasons of Palestinian-Israel conflict. The two artists observed the way people were behaving and how they were relating to each other. They have discovered that the area hosts different religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They have seen mountains, deserts, lakes and the sea and they experienced love, hate, hope and despair while crossing both countries. They remained amazed by such extraordinary lands and they have understood that there is totally no difference among these people.
“They are like twin brothers raised in different families”
So, what did these two artists try to do? Putting people face to face. According to them, this was the only method to let them realise they are really similar one to each other.
“We want, at last, everyone to laugh and to think by seeing the portrait of the other and his own portrait” — artists said.
The tension between the two countries is still present and even tense. In this very sensitive context, there are bilateral peace projects and agreements that are trying to build a peaceful solution for the future of these countries. JR and Marco remain optimistic about converging the two countries over safe and internationally recognised borders.
Women Are Heros (Brazil, 2008–2009)
“It’s a project made of bric-a-brac, like the favela itself. We had to adapt to this world where the roofs of houses are made of plastic and children’s revolvers are made of steel. We managed to get by in spite of the steep streets, the unsteady houses, the unpredictable electric cables and the exchanges of gunshots where the bullets sometimes go through several houses at once”, says JR.
Women Are Heroes is a project JR started to work on in 2008. Favelas located in the center of Rio de Janeiro are always being seen as a place of violence and drug dealers/police clashes. Moro de Provincia is one of them.
In August 2008, this specific favela appeared on the television screen in order to present the art exhibition Women. The project is made up of large-scale photographs of women’s eyes and faces all over the hill and the favela. These female gazes represent a tribute to all those women who are always been primary victims of war, crime, rape and political or religious fanaticism, but who actually play an important role in the society.
In 2010, JR presented his Woman Are Heroes film at Cannes.
In 2014 Woman Are Heroes project was finally completed. The artist’s last artwork, part of this series, was stuck on a container ship which traveled from the port of Le Havre to Malaysia. The strong meaning of this closing project is to be found in all women around the world: faith, hope and strong power they always have and that is part of each woman around the world.
Some Exhibitions
(2015) Hong Kong — HOCA — March to April
(2015) Hong Kong — Galerie Perrotin — March
(2015) Malaga, Spain — CAC — June to September
(2015) Paris — Galerie Perrotin — September to October
(2015) Lille, France — Tri Postal — September
(2015)Toronto — Nuit Blanche — October
