La vie d'un street artist: JR

Hello,

My name is JR, I am now a 33-year-old successful and globally known street artist.

My story started when I was 14, I was a young graffiti artist, my friends and I would tag our names everywhere on walls. We loved adventures, climbing houses, sneaking into tunnels we were addicted to the ‘illegal adrenaline’. We had a different perspective of life.

One day while waiting for my train I found a forgotten camera.

Leaving behind tagging I started documenting the act of my graffiti painting and of other graffiti artists. It’s the same adventure but this time with photography. At 17, I began pasting photocopies of these photographs on outdoor walls and incase people would confuse my art for publicity I would frame them with a stoke of bombe. That is how I created Expo 2 Rue, "Sidewalk Galleries", using the streets as an open gallery for everyone to see my pastings.

Very quick I new my art had a lot of influence on people, so I used it to send out a message of peace.

• In 2004 during the conflict between Israel and Palestine I took a picture of an Israeli and a Palestinian hairdresser and stuck a house sized photocopy of them next to each other. This act let out a message of equality as when people walked by this image they couldn’t recognize which one was which.

• I went to Monrovia in Liberia with some friends, we wanted to pay tribute to woman who during the civil war were invisible and wrongly treated. We photographed them and photocopied their faces all over the village. This project strongly empowered woman so we continued it in different countries such as Brazil, Malaysia …

• Just recently again to send out a message of peace and equality, I installed a photography of a young girl, Kikito, she was looking over the fence separating Mexico and The united states hoping to put a touch of humanity to the immigration debate .

My favorite project was the one in 2011, it was ‘Inside out’ project. Everyone was invited to use their face to pass on a message. Worldwide, people participated and sent their portrait in studios who printed them out and gave them back so that they could stick them on the roads of their village. In 2015, four years after the start of this project, more than 250 000 people have participated to inside out in more than 120 countries, using their face to express themselves.

Wheat past art is the form of street art I use. I simply need a camera, a printer and wheat paste to make all these work of art!

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