Inside Out Project - From the street to the Ford Foundation - Week 5 - Elodie Rousselin

JR is a french photographer known all around the world for his giant photographies of people. Because, what is important in his work is human. After « Portrait of a generation » in the suburbs of Paris, after the riots of 2005, « Face 2 Face » in Israel and Palestine in 2007, « Women are heroes » in India, Brazil, Africa and Cambodia, from 2001 to 2008, JR started in 2011 a participative project named « Inside Out Project ». 

The idea of this global art project is to give opportunity to everyone to share their portrait and a statement of what they stand for, with the world. For participate, and anyone can do it, group or single people, it's really easy : take a portrait with your camera, download it in the website, put your statement, the reason why you want to participate, the staff of the project will print your portrait as a poster and send it you, and after you just have to paste it in the street. This project, from an artist, must be undertaken by citizens for exist. And it's working : more than 100,000 portraits were pasted in 108 countries. 

An article of ARTnews magazine of the 18th october 2012 points out that a reproduction of JR's work in a favela in Rio, Brazil, is now put in a mural at the 11th floor of the Ford Foudation. For the foudation's president, Luis N. Ubinas, JR's art and social work is usefull for his employees. He said : “It reminds them who we work for,” and “We work for those invisible people”.

Photography : John Labbe - A view of the mural in the Ford Foudation

Do the street art have to « come out » the streets, the public space for exist ? Can we buy street art, and militant act like we buy contemporary art ? ...

Sources : 

- ARTnews' article

- JR's website

- Inside Out Project