Celebrated French artist JR will be the subject of a major retrospective show at Qatar Museums (QM) Gallery Katara – the Cultural Village in Doha from March 6 to May 31.
JR is among a handful of world-renowned artists who combine art and engaged actions through large-scale outdoor installations, films, photographs and videos, using the streetscape as his canvas and inspiration.
JR creates “Pervasive Art” that spreads uninvited on the buildings and slums around Paris, on the walls in the Middle East, on the broken bridges in Africa or the favelas in Brazil.
The artist remains anonymous and does not explain his work, allowing the subjects, protagonists, spectators and passers by to raise their own questions.
‘JR – Retrospective’ wi as well ll feature some of the key series that have made the artist famous around the world as a video lounge where selected video works can be viewed.
Among his best known projects include ‘Face 2 Face (2007),’ which forms part of his long running international campaign ‘Portrait of a Generation.”
JR illegally pasted on either sides of the separation wall and in several Palestinian and Israeli cities with large portraits of ordinary citizens with the same occupation of both ethnicities and religions, forcing the viewer to question who each individual person was and whether a
difference could be made.
Another is the Women Are Heroes (2008), a project that showcased poignant and powerful portraits of physical and emotional survival amidst atrocity, documenting the dignity of women in conflict zones and violent environments.
In his ‘The Inside Out Project (2011),’ launched in March 2011 at the TED Conference in California, JR called for the creation of a global art project in which everyone could participate.
JR also directed a film titled Ellis (2015), starring Academy Award winning actor Robert de Niro, set in the abandoned Ellis Island Hospital complex. Using his unframed art installations, JR tells the forgotten story of the immigrants who built America.
JR also covered the streets of Rio to come up with his ‘Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games (2016)’ project, which he described as his ‘craziest’ project yet.
JR was invited by the Louvre to transform one of the most recognisable aspects of the world-renowned museum: making the famous pyramid ‘disappear’ in plain sight through a spectacular anamorphosis, an illusion that covered the entire structure.
Born in France in 1983, JR is based in Paris and New York. Beginning his artistic career at the age of 17, he joined the Galerie Perrotin in 2011. Since then, JR creates monumental photographs that he pastes around the world, infiltrating in urban life anonymous portraits, witnesses of the present and the past.
He received the prestigious TED Prize in 2011 that offered him to make a “wish to change the world”. JR exhibits freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not typical museum visitors.
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