Can art change the world? was the name of the book that accompanied the first major exhibition of the photo artist who calls himself JR. ‘Can art change the world?’ Rhetorical question. Answer: ‘Yes.’ And JR is working on it.
JR found a camera in the subway, didn’t take it to ‘lost property’ but stole it. He went to take pictures of his graffiti friends-in-action in the Parisian banlieue where he was born. That’s how it started. His photographic creativity now recognizes no limits. Playful and cool he, like his graffiti colleague Banksy, claims the world as his studio and as his museum. In migrant neighbourhoods, slums and favelas, he mocks the power with his playful interventions and literally gives the masses a face. A very big face: in the neighborhoods where he shoots, he puts huge prints of the portraits he makes there on facades, roofs, stairs and walls (forget that dull standard smile, make a face, get to know yourself). There is one on the back door of a car, on the side of a bus it drives past.
His work became world news when he put Trump’s border wall into perspective in Mexico by placing a gigantic photo of a toddler, as if he was looking over it. JR’s work is ephemeral, the photos wear out and are gone. His art is for those who were there, that is, the local population. For the outsiders who weren’t there, it’s guesswork. And be amazed, I notice in it Groningen Museum. The masterful exhibition opened there JR – Chronicles, with videos and wall-sized images of what he made, from India to Jerusalem to Rio de Janeiro. And with his ‘frescoes’: images composed of hundreds of human portraits that characterize a city or neighborhood or power. They look swinging and current, but indeed, with all the bustle of heads and postures, they are reminiscent of medieval frescoes.
Still full of JR’s images I go to Middelstum, for a blind date with Jur Bekooy of the Old Groninger Churches Foundation. He emailed me: did you enjoy the medieval devils in Italy? Well, we have it here in the Hippolytus Church also, come and have a look. And now I can just go on the scaffolding, which is there because the paintings in the ceiling vaults are being repaired from the natural gas quake damage. There I lie, close to the Groningen devils, appetizingly painted bat-men who prey upon naked sinners. Those sinners huddle together, but they are not a gray mass, their faces make them individual.
I’m thinking about JR again. In essence, he and the 16th-century Groningen painter do the same. They make a reverence to art like an outstretched hand to people who take the trouble to be addressed – those people see themselves. Rarely literally, but as beings of the world. It can be hell, but thanks to the work of artists like JR and his medieval colleague, he’s fed up with excitement.
#Photographer #people #big #face #forget #silly #smile