Inside Out Project in Japan

JR - Can art change the people's life?
February 10（Sun.) - June 2（Sun.), 2013

This exhibition features the now most celebrated French artist JR, presenting his activities throughout his entire career at once for the first time in the world. This exhibition is also the final chapter of a trilogy of our post-earthquake curation that we started last year. The first chapter “Turning Around” show introduced artist who have tried to change status quo of existing societies all over the world, and the following “Kyohei Sakaguchi: PRACTICE FOR A REVOLUTION” show carried out an experiment to construct a new society by overlapping creative layers to the everyday world.

This exhibition introduces video documentaries of all the projects conducted by JR in chronological order, from the very first work that led him to embark upon working in streets all over the world, including “Portrait of a Generation” (2004-2006), a project covering street walls in the center of Paris with portraits of young people living in public housing communities in Paris’ outskirts, “Face 2 Face” (2007), gigantic photos of Palestine and Israeli posted on both sides of the wall dividing these, and “Women Are Heroes” (2008-2010), an attempt to protect dignity of women under military conflicts all around the world by showing their large-scale portraits.

He travelled around disaster-affected areas in northeast Japan (from Kisen-numa to Fukushima) in November 2011 prior to this exhibition. With a truck specially equipped with a camera and a large-format printer for portrait-making, he made portraits of about 400 people, such as children, local fishermen, shopkeepers of reconstructed shopping streets and the likes; which he exhibited all around those towns. Presented with its documents and portraits, this project becomes a part of the whole exhibition.

Rather than addressing his own message, JR’s activities aim at creating galleries open and accessible to everybody, in streets all over the world, to activate communication among people there and enable them to address their own local issues to the world. For this purpose, he makes his name anonymous, “JR.”

Visitors to this exhibition can participate in JR’s “Inside Out” project. A participant will enter a photo booth in the exhibition space prepared to make a portrait and its poster-size print.
Then the participant is free to receive the poster, post it to wherever you wish, and
send its photo to Watari-um museum if you want to release it on the museum website.

In 2011 TED Prize speech, JR amazed audience all over the world. art can change the way we see th world JR boldly sates: “art can change the way we see the world".

WATARI-UM
The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art
3-7-6 jinguumae, Shibuya-ku
Tokyo Japan 150-0001
tel 03-3402-3001 fax 03-3405-7714
http://www.watarium.co.jp

Closed: Mondays, except for Feb.11, Apr.29, May 6
Opening Hours: 11:00 to 19:00 (open till 21:00 on Wednesdays)
Admission Fee: Adult 1000 yen / student (under 25 years) 800 yen
Pair Ticket: 2 Adults 1600 yen / 2 Students 1200 yen
(Ticket with signature is valid throughout the exhibition period.)