Dear Global TED Community,
We're thrilled to announce the TED Prize winner for 2011.
There's only one catch -- we can't tell you his name. Not now. Not ever. Because this winner is a photographer and artist whose work is based on the ability to remain anonymous. In other words, he's a guerilla artist.
We can only tell you his initials -- JR.
JR's work involves embedding into neighborhoods, favelas and villages around the world, photographing the people who live there and learning their stories -- then pasting his striking images onto massive local canvases: buildings, buses, roads and bridges. His latest global art project is called "Women Are Heroes." (Watch the emotionally powerful trailer.)
Why JR?
JR embodies the many characteristics we look for in a winner: creativity, vision, leadership and persuasion. His photography is about unlocking the power of possibility, revealing our true selves to those who live around us, and sharing those stories far and wide.
JR creates “Pervasive Art” that spreads uninvited on buildings of Parisian slums, on walls in the Middle East, on broken bridges in Africa or in favelas in Brazil. People in the exhibit communities, those who often live with the bare minimum, discover something absolutely unnecessary but utterly wonderful. And they don’t just see it, they make it. Elderly women become models for a day; kids turn into artists for a week. In this art scene, there is no stage to separate the actors from the spectators.
Some major achievements:
- In 2006, he launched Portrait of a Generation, huge-format portraits of the suburban “thugs” posted on the walls of the bourgeois districts of Paris. This illegal project became “official” when Paris City Hall wrapped its own building in JR’s photos.
- In 2007, with Marco, he did Face 2 Face, the biggest illegal photo exhibition ever. JR posted huge portraits of Israelis and Palestinians face to face in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities, and on the both sides of the Security fence / Separation wall. Although experts said it was impossible, he did it.
- He embarked on a long international trip in 2008 for his exhibition Women are Heroes, a project which underlines the dignity of women who are often the targets of conflicts. In 2010, the film “Women are Heroes” was presented at the Cannes Film Festival and received a long standing ovation.
- JR is currently working on two projects: Wrinkles of the City, which questions the memory of a city and its inhabitants; and Unframed, which reinterprets famous photographs and photographers in new contexts. He is taking photos from museum archives and exposing them to the world, huge format photos on the walls of cities, creating free art exhibitions.
Why a guerilla artist?
Guerilla art is about provocation and pushing limits to start dialogue. It has the capacity to engage and break down barriers in ways art in galleries or museums does not. The audience is often those who are least likely to be exposed to art. When guerilla art is practiced as it is by JR, the work is not about him but about the community where it is placed -- in subject, in execution, and in enjoyment.
Although other guerilla artists also make statements about society, few do it on the scale and with the same community engagement as JR. We appreciate his sense of social conscience, working with these communities beyond the exhibition (for example, he set up a cultural centre in the heart of the Brazilian favela he worked in).
JR attracts loyalty and respect from both his subjects, his friends and volunteers who help him mount all of his exhibitions. He has thousands of people who have worked with him to post the photographs around the world in the past six years. The scale of his work is huge, not just the size of each individual portrait, or the amount of space each exhibition covers in one place, but the number of communities and countries each project involves.
We are so happy to welcome and introduce JR, and to start planning his wish.
With thanks,
Chris Anderson, TED Curator
Amy Novogratz, TED Prize Director
p.s. You can also read today's New York Times story about JR and the TED Prize.
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