The Chronicles Of JR

Photo Credit: ERIC GARAULT

FRENCH ARTISTJR ALWAYS TRIES TO MAKE AN IMPACT — AND THIS YEAR, HE’S DOING SO, IN PART, BY BRINGING HIS CHRONICLES SERIES TO MIAMI.

BY LAURA SCHREFFLER

PHOTOGRAPHY ERIC GARAULT 

SHOT ON LOCATION IN PARIS

JR is a busy man. So busy, in fact, that he doesn’t even have time to taste.

This is what first strikes me about the French artist when he pops onto my Zoom in September, clad in a simple white T-shirt and black bowler hat, eyes hidden — as per usual — behind a pair of dark shades. He’s rushing so regularly from one project to the next, one city to the next, that food seems to have ceased having a flavor. Instead, it appears to be a function. The fries he’s currently noshing on might be the best on the planet, but he’s popping them into his mouth so methodically that I can only infer he’s not eating for pleasure but for sustenance alone — just enough fuel to keep his battery running.
Carbs, admittedly, are a decent energy boost. I wonder if the dark is regenerating, too, given that he’s currently sat in a dimly lit Soho café, his sole focus being, of course, his art.

“There’s so much going on right now, but that’s what’s exciting,” he declares. “I’m on this journey as an artist — a journey that I’ve been on since I was 16 years old — and I’m doing it because I love doing it. I want to make sure that is the case with every project I do; that there’s never a project I have to do. I’m always busy, but it’s always with amazing things. I can never complain — I never have an excuse to complain.”

JR certainly won’t be complaining this fall, when he trades both of his home bases — Paris and New York — for sunny Miami, where he’ll debut his latest work, The Chronicles of Miami, in early December. His Magic City murals are the latest in a series of city-specific, participatory pieces that collectively comprise his Chronicles series, which, thus far, have focused on the people of New York, San Francisco, and the suburb of Paris Clichy-Montfermeil. Each piece entails photographing and filming hundreds of people, alone or in groups, and collaging their portraits to create a narrative composition that deals with a place or social issue.

Photo Credit: ERIC GARAULT
But he doesn’t create them for social consciousness alone. “Having the excuse of making the mural forces you to tap the shoulders of people all around the city and say, ‘Hey, what’s your story? Who are you?’ You can’t do that in real life, but when you do a mural, you can stop anyone who is selling something at the corner and ask ‘Do you want to be part of this mural?’ And people are usually like, ‘sure.’ You would never talk to that person otherwise.”

He explains that, even when totally familiar with a location, like New York, where he’s lived for over a decade, he took the same approach. “It’s an incredible way to discover the city, explore neighborhoods I had never been to. Even if you’re a New Yorker, you still live in your bubble. If you live in Miami, you live in your bubble. Making those murals forces you to go behind each of those bubbles and show how everyone’s interconnected. The mural ends up being a mirror, which represents the whole city and shows it’s an entire community.”

Holding up a global mirror is particularly important to JR, who, as he is fond of saying, owns the biggest art gallery in the world — though this is not, for those familiar with his work, meant to be taken literally. He displays his pieces in various cities around the world, freely and on the streets, and has always not just allowed, but actively encouraged, the public to assist. To inspire and encourage an interest in art, he prefers to catch the attention of people who are not typical museum visitors.

JR’s artistic method is as unique as his views and practices. He creates some of his public art — for projects such as Women Are Heroes, Face 2 Face, and Portrait of a Generation — by use of wheat pasting, producing large scale mono photographs and shooting his subjects with a 28mm wide-angle lens, the blown-up images of which are then pasted on urban surfaces such as the sides of buildings, bridges, and rooftops.

And though its residents are his focus, Chronicles intentionally turns the cities into living, breathing beings. “[I always choose] cities that are in total shift; at a moment where they’re changing,” he explains. “I want to capture the essence of the people within that city. There’s no better way for me to do that than to paint a scene depicting a group of people: you can press and click on every single person and hear their story. When you see murals of groups of people in museums that were painted a hundred or a thousand years ago, you never get to learn about those people. But now, with technology, you can. And that’s how I came up with the idea of representing a community, and at the same time, letting them express themselves, and recording their stories along with it, so that their grandchildren will be able to hear them one day.”

Come December, the residents of Miami will have their time to shine. Over 1,000 Miamians and visitors alike had their portraits taken in JR’s mobile studio, a 53-foot-long truck he drove through the diverse neighborhoods of Wynwood, Little Haiti, the Design District, Downtown, Liberty City, Little Havana, Miami Beach, and Coconut Grove. Anyone who passed by was invited to have their portrait taken and asked how they wanted to be remembered in a bid to create a narrative of Miami at this moment in time.

In Little Havana, expert domino players, cigar rollers, and musicians were photographed in action, practicing their craft in the neighborhood they call home. In Miami Beach, he captured clubgoers decked out for a night of revelry. He also set up his first-ever poolside studio, where scantily clad Miamians agreed to have their portraits taken post-swim. After being photographed, each participant entered a recording booth, in which they could share a story. Some talked about how they found themselves in the city, while others spoke about their craziest nights out on the town. Each participant will hear his or her voice as well, which will be connected to the portraits through a JR:murals app.

And so, his raison d’être, as it were, as well as his process, seems clear. But on my end, one question remains, and it is this: why Miami? Not that the city doesn’t make sense, but JR has a clear connection to the likes of New York and Clichy-Montfermeil. Miami, a place to which he has no distinct ties, is more of a conundrum.

He explains, “Miami is an incredible city. In the last couple of years, it has totally exploded and shifted, and become ten times bigger. People from New York and all over the world started to move there. I used to go once a year for Art Basel, then realized there was an energy there that started inspiring people to come and stay. COVID was a big turn for it. It’s a crossroad for many people: some come there for a better dream, some come there for a better living. All of this is connected and that is why a lot of communities are represented in the mural. You have people from Cuba, Jamaica, lots of different parts of the world. They live as little communities there, all together. That’s what you don’t get to see if you just come to visit. Making a mural there was a way to dive into that community. It was mind-blowing for me.”

Because he tries to say something important, to make a statement, to discover some sort of social consciousness with each of his Chronicles, I’m intrigued to hear what he learned, what his takeaway was, and what he decided to say with his piece after spending time in the Magic City. “What I learned in Miami is to sift through the layers of the city and see what lies beneath it. There’s a different energy there. The creativity floats around, you know? You can tell it’s a city by the ocean, in constant movement. You can tell it’s a city that’s building itself, and has an impact on its people. Miami people have the right kind of tone — one that’s not too stressed. They work hard but know how to enjoy life. When you have the sun and the ocean next to you, you have a better way of living than in other places.”

Photo Credit: ERIC GARAULT

I want to change people’s perspectives about things,” says JR.

Having covered a lot of ground over the last hour, we’re now getting into the ‘why’ of his thought-provoking pieces. “It’s all a matter of perspective. Art can raise questions and force you to look at things differently, and that’s what I do with my projects. They always bring you this different perception,” he explains, before referring back to his most recent large-scale project — one that hit (and took place) particularly close to home.

The Opéra national de Paris invited JR to take part in the renovation of its iconic Palais Garnier by creating two successive installations, where he turned the façade of the Palais Garnier into a cave entrance that references Plato’s allegory of the cave, a place of knowledge and transmission that proposes a metamorphosis in two acts. The first debuted in September; the second occurred before the debut of his Chronicles of Miami in November.

“I did Act I in Paris in September, and it was beyond incredible. Thousands of people came every night to see the projection of the ballet within my piece,” he shares. He sounds excited, but because of his signature sunglasses, I cannot be sure, as I can’t see a telltale shimmer in his eyes.

But then he admits it. “It opened a whole new range of dimension to my work that I’m beyond excited for,” JR says, noting that, to him, Act II was even more ambitious, and therefore, even more impactful, than Act I.”
In fact, he’s flying back home to Paris the day following our chat to continue working on it, which is how he spent most of his October. “It’s going to be mind-blowing,” he confesses. “I’ll activate that piece on the building in a way that nobody can even imagine right now. The challenges are huge: there’s more risk of failing than succeeding, but that’s when I know a project is interesting.”

It certainly sounds interesting, as he shares a bit about the concept to be, which, at publication time, will have already debuted in the City of Light.

But now, months in advance, he’s divulging some juicy details, confiding, “It will be as visual as Act I, that’s for sure. You’ll go deeper in the cave, but it won’t be animated with projection as in September. It’s going to be something much more analogic and special, from the music to the façade. It will be an epic moment for Paris, for all the people who will travel to see this, and for me,” he declares.

For many reasons, as it happens. Doing something this big was a testament to his success, a validation of work. It also lit a creative fire within him, and now, JR both wants and needs to do more.

Photo Credit: ERIC GARAULT
“I don’t know why I haven’t projected within a piece of mine before,” he says with a shake of his head. “But then, when I saw it, I was like, Oh my God, I haven’t thought of that. I was surprised by the effect it created. I didn’t expect it to work on such a large scale, or to work so well, or for people to respond like that, but it was a perfect combination.”

JR knew he had a hit on his hands with Act I because of the public’s response: the overwhelmingly positive feedback he is still currently receiving is both humbling and gratifying. “I didn’t do any press, just posted on Instagram, and suddenly, I had between 6,000 and 10,000 people on the square, there, watching. The word of mouth between people is unbelievable. There were all the people passing through, stopping and saying, ‘What’s this?’ and having no idea. With the combination of that and people writing to each other saying, ‘You should come see this,’ by the last weekend, you couldn’t even drive a car on the square. It was packed every day, everywhere. It was incredible.”

It seems that JR is entering a new phase of his career, but is this new type of work opening new doors as well? “I think all doors have always been open,” he says. “Now I’m just thinking how to do things in different contexts. You can do this with the opera, on theaters, on a movie set — it’s such a simple shift. It’s about changing the canvas of how we present things and reinventing the way we look at it because there’s another layer to it. The opera can be very exclusive, but suddenly, it is open for everyone, and that, for me, is the biggest part of it. The role of the artist is to shine a different light and show that there are different ways of looking at the world.”

JR, born Jean-René, has believed in this vision for at least half of his life. Once upon a time, he admits that he was just another typical teenager with a passion for graffiti, living and breathing the art form and creating under the moniker Face 3. But one day, when he found a camera on the subway, his perception of street art began to change. He started to track those who communicated messages over walls, on rooftops, and in the hidden underbelly of Paris. But it wasn’t until 2004 — when he photographed the riots that broke out in its banlieues — that he created his first major project, pasting up large prints of the faces of those involved around the city.

His star has continued to rise, and quickly, too. In 2006, he completed an illegal project in a suburb of Paris, dubbed Portrait of a Generation — it became official only when the Paris City Hall wrapped its building with his photos. In 2007, he managed to defy expert’s predictions of failure by creating the largest illegal exhibition ever in Face2Face. His artwork was placed as huge portraits of Israelis and Palestinians face to face in a variety of Palestinian and Israeli cities, managing to artfully dodge authorities on both sides of the separation wall.

Photo Credit: ERIC GARAULT
Additionally, JR has debuted exhibitions such as Women Are Heroes, Inside Out, and The Wrinkles of the City — a collaboration with fellow artist José Parla for the Havana Biennale — all around the world, in cities such as Cartagena, Shanghai, Los Angeles, and New York. He also directed the 2015 short film ELLIS, starring Robert De Niro, which was written by Academy Award winner Eric Roth. In 2011, he won the TED Prize, a cash award of $1,000,000 that’s given annually to a forward-thinking individual with a bold vision for sparking global change.

And clearly, he has continued to do that. JR has always wanted to be the change, which is why — quite uniquely for an artist of his ilk — he sticks to his guns and refuses to sell out. Like a modern-day Groucho Marx, he rebuffs being part of any brand that will have him.

Yet brands pay and sometimes, more money can foster further change. JR doesn’t see it that way though. “I took a journey as an artist without knowing the art world. I had never studied it and I don’t come from a background of artists, but I found such freedom in doing graffiti and expressing myself the way I wanted. I realized that the audience I created was looking at my work because of the vision I was bringing. If suddenly I started to become another billboard, what would the difference be between me and an advertisement? To stay independent, you have to protect your space. It doesn’t mean that I can’t do a collaboration, but it can’t be within my work, and that’s why I never do it,” he explains.

It all boils down to authenticity for him, and a commitment to being the artist he always knew he could be — the artist that, he is proud to say, he still is. JR might be 40 (a young 40, to be sure) but he is still that teenager who got excited by street art, filled with wonder, who has never lost an appreciation for what he does.

He says as much now. “From an early age, I was always curious to see different facets of the world. I was always outside, in the street, taking the train, seeing what was on the other side of the line. I had that freedom, and I used it. I think I am still a kid wandering the world, wanting to find ways to daydream. In my work, I take a lot of pleasure doing things that are crazy and can sometimes fail — I’m not always going to succeed, but I’m always trying.”

This, I tell him, is a unique superpower.

His response? “That,” he says, “is art. Art is another portal to see the world and question yourself. ‘Why am I here, doing this? Why am I alive here, on this planet’? Art is a way to reflect that to people in different parts of the world. That’s why you want to hear what they’ve learned; why art is so long-lasting; why it can be timeless. That’s why we’re looking at paintings from the past, asking ourselves what this artist was trying to say.”

Because JR brought up the long-lasting effects of art, I wonder if he’s ever paused to think about his own legacy, and what his art will say about this moment in time in the future. But while he has big plans, to JR, the future is a complete mystery — and he wants it to stay that way.

“I don’t really know what I’m doing next year, so to know what people would think about me in 100 years isn’t really something I think about,” he confides. “I really live in the present with no strategy or goal. The journey is what matters to me.”

But also, let’s be honest: sometimes — especially in the case of Miami, where there is a better way of living — it is also about the destination, right?

Photo Credit: ERIC GARAULT