J R
b. 1983, France
JR’s communal and collaborative practice promotes civic discourse across the globe through large-scale photographic interventions and digitally collaged murals.
JR uses photographs, murals, films, videos, and other multimedia works to address socio-economic and political issues. His work—which he refers to as “infiltrating art,” a term descriptive of its ubiquity and ability to reach an audience beyond those who visit museums—has been installed across the globe, from the streets of Paris to the favelas of Brazil and the border between the United States and Mexico.
Begun in 2011, his Inside Out project has allowed over 260,000 people worldwide to obtain photographic portraits that JR’s team prints as large black-and-white posters. He encourages participants to paste them up in common spaces, adding their images to the public sphere. JR has directed short films including Les Bosquets (2015) and ELLIS (2015), as well as the feature documentary Faces Places (2017), co-directed with Agnès Varda and nominated for an Academy Award.
In 2018, JR collaborated with TIME magazine on The Gun Chronicles: A Story of America, creating a magazine cover, video mural, and interactive website which included an exhibition at Pace Gallery in October of 2018.