THE INSPIRATION SERIES / BY ROB URBAN
JR.
A wall.
A face.
A place for you.
On public art, shared authorship and the pleasure of making something together.
JR’s public photographs cover walls, trains, monuments and the temporary surfaces of a city. Their scale can be spectacular, but the recurring subject is an ordinary human face. The enlargement does not turn that person into a celebrity. It changes the terms on which the surrounding space can ignore them.
I admire the nerve of that gesture. JR, the French artist known for monumental public portraits, asks us to give a stranger the attention we ordinarily reserve for someone already famous. A face can become the thing around which the rest of a street suddenly seems arranged.
The scale is thrilling. What keeps me interested is the invitation that follows: you can be part of making this. You can decide what your community wants to say.
Someone
worth noticing.
Large public images compete with architecture, traffic and the habits of people who did not choose to enter a gallery. They must work before a label is read.
JR’s black-and-white portraits simplify color while preserving expression. The image becomes legible at a distance, yet the closer question remains personal: who is this person, and why have they been given the visual authority usually reserved for a product, leader or monument?
There is a wonderfully direct intelligence in the choice of a face. People do not need an introduction to the language of a grin, an uncertain look or raised eyebrows. A portrait can reach someone before they have decided whether they are interested in art.
Then the setting gives the image something to talk to.
TECATE / 2017
And then,
they shared a meal.
In 2017, JR installed an enormous portrait of a toddler named Kikito overlooking the fence between Mexico and the United States. On the installation’s final day, a picnic brought Kikito’s family and guests from both countries to a table extending across the fence. Food and tea passed between people. A mariachi ensemble played with musicians on each side.
The artist’s account of the picnic records a border patrol officer sharing tea with him. That small action is the detail I keep coming back to. An installation had made an occasion for people to do something familiar together.
JR understands how much an image can gain from a second act. First, people stop and look. Then there is a table, a meal and another person within conversational distance. The artwork has become somewhere to spend a little time.
What would your
community say?
JR launched Inside Out in 2011 after receiving the TED Prize. It gave communities a way to organize their own public portrait installations, using a recognizable black-and-white format without requiring the artist to make every local decision.
The Group Action process begins with a statement from the organizers. They gather participants, arrange a location and submit portraits paired with permission from the people pictured. The Inside Out team processes the images; the local group installs the work and documents what happens around it.
Those are consequential choices. A statement about belonging can mean something different outside a school than beside a workplace. The participants know the relationships behind the faces. Choosing the site and describing the purpose are part of making the work, even when the posters share a format with installations elsewhere.
I admire the confidence required to make the method available. A distinctive visual language can become a useful tool in someone else’s hands. The shared format makes the projects recognizable; the local choices give each one its reason to exist.
INSIDE OUT / LOCAL AUTHORSHIP
Your faces.
Your statement.
Your credit.
The project’s own explanation of credit is explicit: Group Actions are credited to their organizers, and JR does not join them as a guest speaker or help with pasting. His absence keeps the occasion centered on the community’s message.
That is a generous piece of design. When a school, neighborhood or group of friends puts its faces on a wall, the story can belong to the people who assembled it. The artist’s reputation helps open a door. He leaves space for other people to walk through.
There is also care in the ordinary preparation. The instructions ask organizers to gather permissions, plan the location, recruit help and collect participants’ stories. Enthusiasm gets a practical route to becoming something real.
I find that encouraging because so many good ideas stall between wanting people involved and giving them an intelligible way to join. Here, someone can take a photograph, arrange a wall, help paste a poster or explain why the message matters to them. Contribution has several doors.
Paper keeps
the monument mortal.
The pasted photograph has a different authority from bronze. It can wrinkle, tear, fade or disappear under another layer of city life.
Inside Out explains that a poster’s life depends on the wall’s surface, the weather and its exposure to passersby. The material places a limit on the spectacle. A face can command a street without becoming a permanent fixture of it.
That makes documentation more than a souvenir of the finished wall. Images of the installation, reactions and participants’ accounts can preserve parts of the encounter that the paper cannot. A photograph of the completed arrangement shows its scale. The surrounding stories help explain why it was there.
The temporary material also makes the encounter feel available. These are people meeting a place at a particular moment. The work can be ambitious without asking to own the wall forever.
CASA AMARELA / RIO DE JANEIRO
A door that
opens again
tomorrow.
Casa Amarela offers another way to understand that relationship with a place. JR and Brazilian photographer Maurício Hora founded the cultural center in 2009 in Morro da Providência, Rio de Janeiro. Its programs combine arts, education and community life across generations.
Here, participation has a recurring address.
The center describes work that extends from youth education to community meals. That changes the rhythm of the encounter. A wall can catch someone on the way somewhere else. A center gives people somewhere to return, with relationships that can develop through ordinary repeated visits.
The center’s history traces that commitment through a reading room, photography workshops and, from 2017, daily programs for children and young people. Hora was born and raised in Morro da Providência. His knowledge of the neighborhood is part of the work’s foundation.
That partnership deepens my admiration for JR. International visibility can bring attention to a place; a collaborator’s local knowledge helps give that attention somewhere useful to land. A center needs teachers, organizers and people willing to return after the exhibition is over.
The repeated visit has its own creative power. A child can try something, come back and get better. A relationship can grow familiar. Art becomes part of the ordinary week.
Stay for the people.
When I look at JR’s work, I want to follow the photograph into the relationships around it. Who chose the message? Who brought the people together? What did the neighbors make of seeing those faces on their street?
Those questions make the work richer. They lead toward the person in the portrait, the organizer with a plan, the friend holding the ladder, the teacher who will open the room again.
That is why JR matters to me. His work gives ordinary people an extraordinary amount of visual space, then offers ways for them to become authors of what happens there. It is bold, playful and full of possibility.
A face several stories high can stop a passerby. Giving the person behind it a part in the story gives us a reason to stay.
About JR and the projects
Who is the artist JR?
JR is a French artist known for large public photographic installations. His work often uses black-and-white portraits to bring everyday people’s faces and stories into streets, buildings and other shared spaces.
What is the Inside Out Project?
Inside Out is a participatory art project JR launched in 2011 after receiving the TED Prize. Local organizers create public portrait installations around a statement chosen by their community. Group Actions are credited to their organizers.
What is Casa Amarela Providência?
Casa Amarela is a cultural center in Morro da Providência, Rio de Janeiro, founded in 2009 by JR and Brazilian photographer Maurício Hora. It offers arts, education and community programs across generations.
FURTHER INTO THE WORK
Sources: Inside Out’s project history, Group Action process and FAQ; JR’s account of the border picnic; and Casa Amarela’s website and history, linked above.
I’m Rob Urban. These profiles are part of how I think about creativity, communication and the people who make a difference. For more of my writing, or a conversation about working together, meet me here.