Parisian artist JR’s work is immediately stunning. It’s hard to walk by the side of a building and not notice a 20-foot high portrait of a woman’s face. Of course, these are not commissioned works nor do they portray women the usual way you would expect a billboard-sized photo to, namely as sex objects to sell luxury goods. Here, they are of women of all ages, young and old, staring pensively or playfully into the camera, full of life and dignity.
The project is called Women are Heroes. JR traveled with unpaid assistants into some of the more dangerous parts of the world–the slums of Kiberia, Kenya, the notorious Rio favela Morro da Providencia, etc.–where, despite the fact that they are often the ones holding families and communities together, most of the violence is directed towards women. It is no coincidence that countries that deny their women basic rights also tend to be some of the more violent places in the world. (It makes you wonder how much more peaceful Earth would be if it contained more societies run by women). It was in these dangerous, repressive locales that he created street art in his usual style–taking arresting photographic portraits, closely cropped around the face, and then pasting giant versions of them up in public spaces.
JR had tried something similar to this in Israel, pasting giant portraits of Israelis and Palestinians making goofy faces all over the walls separating the two territories. Think of him as a kind of earnest Banksy, addressing social problems not with attitude or irony but with a straight-forward humanity. His work has garnered him plenty of attention in the art world; it’s been sold at Sotheby’s and won him the $100,000 TED Prize.
We’ve always known that images have strong influence over us. The giant billboards hanging over our highways and cities, often filled with overly sexualized images of girls, subconsciously influence us to buy all kinds of things. It’s nice to think that somewhere in Sierra Leone or Rio, a young man is walking by one of JR’s portraits, quietly absorbing a different and altogether more constructive message.
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Photos: http://www.jr-art.net
