JR is a French street artist from Paris who’s larger than life stencil art, installations and sculptures made from scaffolding have propelled him to worldwide fame and can be found in major cities around the globe. Originally a graffiti artist, he found a camera on the Paris metro in early 2000s and went on to take portraits of fellow artists, which he then turned into stencil art to put them on walls. JR’s works have been featured as part of the opening of URBAN NATION Museum in 2017. […]
JR is a French street artist from Paris who’s larger than life stencil art, installations and sculptures made from scaffolding have propelled him to worldwide fame and can be found in major cities around the globe. Originally a graffiti artist, he found a camera on the Paris metro in early 2000s and went on to take portraits of fellow artists, which he then turned into stencil art to put them on walls. JR’s works have been featured as part of the opening of URBAN NATION Museum in 2017.
Despite creating commissioned pieces like the giant scaffolding installation he did for the Rio Olympics in 2016, like many other urban artists, JR started off working the walls of his hometown Paris. His pervasive artworks spread from the slums of the French metropolis onto walls in the Middle East and favelas in Brazil. Documenting the Paris riots of 2005 with his camera, he then began to turn the photographs of unknown individuals into wheat paste stencils and applied them to walls around town. While JR, who’s real identity remains unknown, does not explain his huge full frame-portraits of people making faces, they clearly combine a powerful social statement linking their appearance to the area they were created in.
