French artist turns global streets into one major gallery

Placing huge photo collages in places as diverse as Kenyan slums, Brazilian shanty towns, a bus in Sierra Leone, and the Israeli separation wall, the French artist JR makes the street into one big gallery.

He recently won the TED prize and his new film, “Women are Heroes,” opens on January 12.

He spoke with ARTINFO about his work, his travels, and the meaning of street art.

Are you a street artist, a photographer, or just an artist?

Does what I do have to have a name or belong to a category? I consider myself an artist but I didn’t learn to be one.

I didn’t go to art school. Actually, I do more postering than photography, but I don’t consider myself a street artist or a photographer. Unlike graffiti artists who tag their names, here it’s other people who are tagged through portrait collages.

My role is ephemeral because once I’m gone, it’s up to the inhabitants to explain the photos that are shown and to appropriate the project for themselves. What interests me is bringing art to improbable places, to create communities through projects that are so big that they force people to ask questions.

What inspires you?

My inspiration comes from curiosity more than technique: a curiosity about difference, travel, the countries that I visit... photography is mostly an excuse. I am curious and I like to discover the flip side of things.

For my project, “28 Millimetres,” when I heard people talk about Kenya, about the shanty towns in Brazil or Cambodia, I wanted to see them for myself.

So it’s really curiosity.

Can you talk a bit about the significance of establishing relationships with local people?

The next part is meeting people, talking, trying to understand. And you might start to question the images that you’ve seen in the media. You meet the people and you realise that there is another reality, another life that is not represented enough.

That’s why I try to emphasise portraits of people. By this method, I hope to be able to get the media interested in these places again through events other than violent ones. That means using the same media “machine” but using it to bring a new view of these places.

What does receiving the TED Prize mean to you?

It is interesting to see how art has taken over the streets: the barriers have been abolished. Artists are breaking out of the museum and using the urban landscape. The fact that TED recognises my vision of things is an honour, but most of all it’s going to let me go in another direction.

I want to invent a new way of integrating people and society into my projects. TED’s vision is close to mine, in fact. I’ve never asked for permission — the people are the ones who let me do what I do. TED’s strength is its community.

Breaking the limits with them and putting our strengths together, it’s kind of as if they came to see me with my little team and now their entire crew is joining us. Up until now, I went all over the world with a small team.

You recently returned from China. Was it harder than usual to produce your art there?

My work in China is part of a new project called “The Wrinkles of the City.” It’s a project based on making portraits of older people who hold the memory of a city that I chose. Alongside the portraits, I collect stories from these people, who have seen great changes to their city.

These portraits are then put up in the city on surfaces that inspire me and also represent the city’s memory and history. Shanghai has an extremely rich history.

Could you tell us about your film “Women Are Heroes”?

It started in 2007. I went to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, and Kenya. The idea came from the observation that men are the ones who control the street in these countries.

My goal was to showcase and honour the fate of women, who are both strong and vulnerable, and who are often the first victims when times are hard.

By showing their portraits in their home countries and then in the framework of exhibitions all over the world, I wanted to emphasise their dignity and share their history so that they can change their image.

Then the project took me to Brazil, Cambodia, and India. The work was shown in various cities, including Paris.

I continued “Women Are Heroes” by making a feature film, which I think of as opening the doors to the project’s backstage. It was the only way for me to give some depth to the project, to bring it full circle, to give women voices, to show that collage is only a stage and that there were real encounters behind it.

Is the primary motivation of your work to break established rules?

The concept came from a simple observation: photography, a universal art, is closed up in galleries and museums. While a lot of people are interested in a close or distant way, fewer take the step of going to see shows. By showing photography in the street, I affect everyone and my gallery is open 24 hours a day.

I like to believe in change, that it is possible to accomplish things that people thought were impossible, such as showing, without permission, Israelis and Palestinians making faces on the same wall in my series “Face2Face.”

My goal is to reach the limits of art within a closed social and cultural environment and to observe the reaction of the local population.

The point is to evaluate the possibilities of intervening in very different environments.

The success of an action like “Women Are Heroes” is to be able to offer these women a status worthy of the position that they hold in their society. Proof through action is prioritised.

ArtInfo