Discover who the Street Artist JR, that managed to reopen Musée Florentin, is

This week, you may have seen that thee trompe l'oeil collage J.R. has made was the reason a Florentine museum opened to passersby ...

Let's discover together who J.R. (Jean René) is, who hides behind these black glasses ... because I admit I'm really keen on this artist who mixes different cultures and different arts

He likes to put strangers in the spotlight and to make people think in the street

He was born in 1983 in the suburbs of Paris and started photography after he found a camera in the metro ...

His 1^er Project was born with the suburban riots in 2005: he illegally glued posters that were portraits of young people from the Cité des Bosquets to highlight their personalities. Later made a short film of it called "Les Bosquets"

JR travels a lot and loves nourishing his spirit with other cultures. In 2008, Jr travelled around the world to meet women living in the heart of conflicts and shared their universe thanks to photography. He made a documentary of it "Women Are Heroes"

He particularly took pictures of the faces of women who live in the Favelas (slums) in Brazil and decorate their houses. He made visible from dozens of kilometers women that were just invisible

With his work, he also seeks to bring together different cultures:

. gluing, on both sides of the Palestinian wall, pictures of inhabitants from the 2 sides of the wall (2007)

. organising a picnic on both sides of the wall separating the US from Mexico (2017)

In 2011, after winning the TED Foundation Award, it started the Inside Out project: a global collaborative project to highlight local initiatives and messages. To take part in this project, you must gather 50 people or more around the same message, send the portraits of these people to the Inside Out team. This team prints them and returns them for free so that this local group can set up an exhibition gluing these portraits and pass on their message locally!

^{https://www.insideoutproject.net/fr/map}

 In 2014, during the renovation of the Pantheon, JR set up a participatory work, inviting unknown citizens to take pictures. These enlarged portraits of unknowns have been exhibited on the floor and on the tarpaulin protecting the work of the Pantheon.

In 2015, he began to be worldwide known and made the headline of the New York Times with his collage of more than 50 meters of a passerby from NY

In 2016 and 2019, he carried out 2 superb projects of anamorphosis at the Louvre (to make the pyramid disappear or to reveal the mysterious basement of the Louvre Courtyard)

In 2017, he collaborated with Agnes Verda to create the movie "Visages, Villages". The both of them travelled across, French countryside with their photo truck that allows them to take photos and print immediately in large format.

In 2020, he photographed and displayed portraits of health care personal on the walls of the Opera Bastille

A few days ago, I shared the giant collage he made for the new MK2 hotel that takes a scene from a Charlie Chaplin movie

Jr made a big splash in Paris with this superb trompe l'oeil on Place du Trocadero

He participated in the creation of Collège de France that has the ambition to form the political leaders of tomorrow for free .....

And to conclude a small quote from JR:

"I have the largest art gallery in the world: the walls all over the world. I draw the attention of those who do not use to go to museums"

I think JR has not finished drawing our attention .... :-) Thanks!

You can follow him @jr