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The eyes in this image belong to Mayra, a DACA Dreamer whose family came to the United States from Mexico when she was a child. Her eyes were printed on a tablecloth for a meal shared between guests who gathered on both sides of the US/Mexico border, including Mayra and her mother. The meal commemorated “Kikito,” a huge installation by JR in which the photograph of a young boy from Mexico towered over the border wall, seeming to peer into the US. With both projects, JR invites us to consider what borders divide us, and how we can come together in spite of them.

Hear JR speak more on his border project, and see more from JR’s career in JR: Chronicles.

When JR was commissioned to design the cover of a Time magazine issue on "Guns in America" he decided to create The Gun Chronicles, an interactive video mural featuring 245 individuals with a range of views on the topic, including hunters, gun collectors and industry lobbyists, BLM activists, shooting victims, and ER teams that treat victims of mass shootings. Working with videographer Tasha Van Zandt and cinematographer Hunter Nolan, JR and his team made stops in Dallas, St. Louis, and Washington D.C. Participants were invited to share their individual views, describe their own experiences, and come together in person for the exhibition of the finished mural in each city. Their accounts are accessible on the project's website.

Hear JR talk more on Gun Chronicles and see more from JR’s career in JR: Chronicles through October 18.

👋  London! JR: Chronicles is now on view at Saatchi Gallery from June 4 - October 3, 2021. Featuring iconic works that highlight the voices of everyday people, JR: Chronicles demonstrates the artist’s ongoing commitment to community, collaboration, and civic discourse. Working at the intersections of photography, social engagement, and street art, the multimedia exhibition showcases original photographs, contact sheets, videos, and documentation of his public installations.  

If you have a friend in London who you think will enjoy this show, share this with them and tell them to check it out! 

After living in Manhattan for nine years, JR decided to devote his third major mural project to the city he had come to call home, creating "The Chronicles of New York City." The French artist sees his “Chronicles” series as a way of getting to know a place through the people that live there. He says, “It’s the most amazing excuse to be able to go anywhere and tap on people’s shoulders and say ‘who are you?'” Each of the 1,128 New Yorkers photographed was also asked to contribute a short audio recording. Using the JR: Murals app, you can listen to the stories that accompany the artwork at the Brooklyn Museum or other locations around Brooklyn where details of the mural have been installed: Domino Park in Williamsburg, Kings Theater in Flatbush, and 80 Hanson Place in Downtown Brooklyn. 

Hear JR speak more about the Chronicles of New York City, and see more from JR's career in JR: Chronicles through October 18

In 2016, JR returned to the Parisian suburb of Clichy-Montfermeil where he had created his "Portrait of a Generation" series over a decade earlier. As before, JR wanted to bring attention to the lived experience of residents in order to counter misconceptions of the neighborhood. This time, however, JR went beyond his usual single-portrait format: inspired by the murals of Diego Rivera, he collaged images of 750 individuals into one enormous scene, a detail of which is seen here. Stopping people on the street or inviting back those who had participated in his earlier series, JR asked each subject how they wanted to be represented in the work. The result is a reminder of both the tensions and the vitality that continue to exist in the neighborhood. JR says, "It is a portrait of those who strive to put poetry back into cement.”

Hear JR speak more about the Chronicles of Clichy-Montfermeil, and see more from JR's career in JR: Chronicles through October 18.

To make The Chronicles of New York City, JR and his team spent the summer of 2018 driving across all five boroughs with their semi-truck turned photo studio. Recruiting subjects at random on the sidewalk, each person or small group was photographed against a green screen, then cut out and added into a digital collage. The entire process was documented and turned into a short film by Jeremy Elkhin and Tasha van Zandt. Both the final mural and the "making of" capture the diversity of people and places that make New York City what it is. 

Just one week left to see JR: Chronicles at the Brooklyn Museum, on view through Sunday, October 18.

⁠Just revealed in Downtown Brooklyn is a new public mural by JR that celebrates communities across New York City’s five boroughs. Since JR: Chronicles opened at the Museum in October, JR has been leaving his mark on Brooklyn through a series of public murals installed in Flatbush, Bedford Stuyvesant, Williamsburg, and now in Downtown Brooklyn at 80 Hanson Place. If you’re in the Downtown Brooklyn neighborhood, be sure to check out the latest The Chronicles of New York City mural to see portraits of New Yorkers pasted on the entire facade of the building.

Join us for a virtual tour of JR: Chronicles, the first major exhibition in North America of works by the French-born artist JR. Working at the intersections of photography, social engagement, and street art, JR often collaborates with communities by making portraits and wheat pasting them in nearby public spaces. See how JR has expanded the meaning of public art through his ambitious projects that give visibility and agency to a broad spectrum of people around the world.

Created by Sharon Matt Atkins, Director of Exhibitions and Strategic Initiatives, and Drew Sawyer, Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Curator, Photography, Brooklyn Museum.

Born in Paris in 1983 to Eastern European and Tunisian immigrant parents, JR began his career as a graffiti artist under the alias Face 3. 

JR (French, born 1983). Expo 2 Rue, Action à Paris, 2001–4. Gelatin silver photograph. © JR-ART.NET 

After finding a camera in the Paris Métro in 2000, he started to document his posse of friends in the act of graffitiing and eventually pasted photocopies of these images onto exterior walls and added painted frames, creating Expo 2 Rue (Sidewalk Galleries). 

Since the pasted images almost always get washed and worn away, documentation of these installations, including the voices of the participants through video and audio recordings, is central to JR’s practice.

In 2004 JR initiated his first major public project, Portrait of a Generation, which featured photographs of young people from housing complex in the Parisian suburbs of Montfermeil and Clichy-sous-Bois.

28 Millimètres, Portrait d’une génération, Amad (2004). Gelatin silver photograph. © JR-ART.NET

JR and his friend Ladj Ly, a filmmaker and resident of Les Bosquets, worked with these communities to produce black and white portraits. 

JR used a camera with a wide-angle lens, which not only distorts their faces but also conveys extreme proximity and intimacy, as opposed to photojournalists who use telephoto lenses from a distance. 

28 Millimeters, Portrait d’une generation: Amad, Paris, Bastille, 2004. Installation image. Wheat-pasted posters on building. © JR-ART.NET

JR and his collaborators then pasted the enlarged images in the surrounding neighborhood of Montfermeil and, eventually, throughout central Paris. Each pasting included the name, age, and address of the sitter.

This photograph of Ladj Ly and friends was the first large-scale image that JR and his friends wheat pasted in the neighborhood prior to the riots there in 2005. It appeared as the backdrop in photographs accompanying newspaper articles and television footage about the uprising, thereby becoming JR’s first published work.

JR (French, born 1983). 28 Millimètres, Portrait d'une génération, B11, Destruction #2, Montfermeil, France, 2013. Installation image. Wheat-pasted posters on building. © JR-ART.NET

In 2013 JR learned that the housing towers in Les Bosquets were going to be demolished, so he and a group revisited the Portrait of a Generation project by pasting portraits in the interior. As the buildings were being torn down, the monumental images of residents were slowly revealed.

In 2005 JR traveled to Israel and Palestinian territories, where he and his friend Marco were inspired to carry out a public project similar to Portrait of a Generation. 

The following year, during a period of fierce tension and fighting in the Gaza Strip, they began meeting with and making portraits of Palestinians and Israelis who held the same jobs.

Ayman Abu Alzulof, a Palestinian actor from the town of Beit Sahour, said he agreed to be photographed because the images would be seen on both sides of the border. "It shows that both parties look like each other, as human beings,” he explained. “It's difficult to differentiate between a Palestinian face and an Israeli face. It will also show that we live here. I think a lot of people will talk about it.”

In 2008 JR initiated Women Are Heroes after learning about the deaths of three young men in the favela of Morro da Providência in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the subsequent riots ignited by the involvement of the Brazilian military. 

The exhibition includes this multi-media diorama that narrates the stories of the participants and project.

28 Millimeters, Women Are Heroes, Action dans la Favela Morro da Providência, Stairs, a Few Days Later, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2008. Color lithograph. © JR-ART.NET

After meeting with residents for a month, the artist collaborated with them to make photographs of the eyes and faces of local women, including some related to the murdered men. Together, they pasted the blown-up images on staircases and buildings around the favela.

28 Millimètres, Women Are Heroes, Action dans la Favela Morro da Providência, Favela de Jour, Rio de Janeiro, 2008. Installation image. Wheat-pasted posters on buildings. © JR-ART.NET

Giant faces and eyes appeared to be staring down into Rio from the hilltop.

Casa Amarela, in Morro da Providência, Brazil. © JR-ART.NET

JR continues to work with the communities with which he partners. In 2009, he established the Casa Amarela (Yellow House) in Morro da Providência in 2009. 

The moon on top of the house is actually a room, where artists from all over the world can stay in exchange for conducting workshops for the children and adults of the favela. They just celebrated their 10th anniversary! 

The exhibition includes a model of Casa Amarela, created by Brazilian artist Raphael Truffi Bortholuzzi

Between 2008 and 2010, JR also completed Women Are Heroes installations in Cambodia, India, Kenya, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

Here is an installation that shows portraits of some of the participants alongside an aerial shot of the images printed on vinyl and installed on rooftops in Kibera, Kenya in 2009. 

The images both transformed the landscape and provided protection from the rain.

In 2008 JR began his project The Wrinkles of the City in Cartagena, Spain. As he had done for Women Are Heroes, JR collaborated with the community to create large-scale portraits. This time he photographed the oldest inhabitants of the city.

This gallery also demonstrates more of JR’s process, including the rolls of paper shown here and mockups.

In 2011 JR won the TED Prize, a $100,000 award given to “leaders with creative, bold wishes to spark global change.” The prize enabled JR to launch Inside Out, a global public art project. He began encouraging others to use his process and providing the means to do so, expanding his collaborative practice to a fully participatory art project.

This installation highlights many of the Inside Out projects (@insideoutproject) through more than 50 videos created by the organizers and participants of actions around the world.

Since 2011 more than 400,000 portraits have been pasted in 141 countries worldwide, including visitors to the Museum’s First Saturday programming last August!

In September 2017 JR installed a monumental photograph of Kikito, a one-year-old boy from Tecate, Mexico, in a location near the child’s home along the U.S.-Mexico border. The giant toddler, seeming to peer over the fence, prompted the viewer to wonder, What does a child think about a fence he sees every day?

Kikito, 2017

Although the nearly 70’ tall image stood in Mexico, it could best be viewed from the United States. Kikito’s mother remarked: “I hope this will help people see us differently than what they hear in the media. . . . I hope in that image they won’t only see my kid. They will see us all.”

JR (French, born 1983). Migrants, Mayra, Picnic across the Border, Tecate, Mexico—U.S.A., 2017. Installation image. Wheat-pasted poster on table. © JR-ART.NET

On October 8, 2017, for the last day of the Kikito installation at the U.S.-Mexico border, JR organized a gigantic picnic on both sides of the wall. Kikito, his family, and dozens of guests came from the United States and Mexico to share a meal. 

People at both sides of the border gathered around the eyes of Mayra, a “Dreamer,” eating the same food, sharing the same water, and enjoying the same live music (with half the band’s musicians playing on either side).

In 2016 JR returned once again to Clichy-Montfermeil with the filmmaker Ladj Ly to photograph more than 750 people from the Parisian suburb in order to create a large-scale mural, inspired by the work of the Mexican painter Diego Rivera. 

In 2017, the mural was installed at Les Bosquets. Here the work is shown as a large-scale transparency print in a lightbox. 

In early 2020, JR started teaching a course titled “Art and Image,” at the École Kourtrajmé, a film school in the neighborhood founded by Ladj Ly.

Still from The Gun Chronicles, 2018. Video, black and white, sound; 4 min. loop. © JR-ART.NET.

Commissioned by Time magazine for its cover on November 5, 2018, this video mural visualizes a spectrum of views on guns in the United States through collaged portraits of 245 individuals, including gun collectors, hunters, law enforcement officials, shooting victims, emergency room teams that treat victims of mass shootings, and gun industry lobbyists. 

Participants were invited to share their individual views, describe their own experiences, and search for common ground; their accounts are accessible on the project's website.

At the center of the exhibition is JR’s new monumental mural project, The Chronicles of New York City (2019). In the summer of 2018, JR and his team spent a month roaming all five boroughs of New York City, parking their 53-foot-long trailer truck in numerous locations and taking photographs of passersby who wished to participate.

JR (French, born 1983). The Chronicles of New York City, 2018–19 (detail). © JR-ART.NET

Each of the 1,128 participants was photographed in front of a green screen, and then the images were collaged into a New York City setting featuring architectural landmarks. 

The participants chose how they personally wanted to be represented and were asked to share audio recordings of their stories, which are now available on a free mobile app.

In keeping with the public and collaborative nature of JR’s art, the museum partnered with organizations in Brooklyn to install murals throughout the burough.  

The Chronicles of New York City, JR and Triangle Stack 2, LOT-EK at Domino Park Photo credit: Marc Azoulay - JR-ART.net

A monumental version of The Chronicles of New York City is on view in Domino Park (@dominopark) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The project has been conceived in collaboration with LOT-EK, which designed Triangle STACK #2 to help bring JR's mural into the city's open space. 

Installation view of The Chronicles of New York City at Kings Theatre, 2019; and Inside Out project at Brooklyn Academy of Global Finance, Bedford-Stuyvesant Courtesy © JR-ART.NET

JR’s murals are also on view at Kings Theatre in Flatbush and the Brooklyn Academy of Global Finance in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Thank you for joining us on our tour of JR: Chronicles. Tune in next Sunday for another tour of our galleries!