JR

JR

JR (Juste Ridicule) is a French photographer and streetartist. He was born in February 1983 in Paris. JR is known for his oversized black and white photographs, so-called „Paste ups“, which he places as monumental posters on buildings, stairs and walls worldwide. JR is one of the most innovative representatives of international contemporary art and currently lives in Paris, likewise New York. To him the road is the greatest gallery in the world.

• In 2006 JR became generally famous for his illegal project „Portrait of a generation“ in France. He glued portraits of suburban thugs in huge formats onto the house walls of philistine-quarters in Paris. The project became „official“ when the City of Paris cased the „City Hall“ with JR's photographs. JR works at the various places and in different cultural and time-historical connections. Furthermore, the town's architecture and culture become the subject of his works.

• In 2007 he started the project „Face2Face“ and thus the largest illegal exhibition of this time. JR hung up oversized portraits of Israelis and Palestinians- face to face - in altogether eight cities and thereby received attention world-wide.

• In 2008 he began his travel to seven countries in three different continents for his film project „Women are Heroes “ by which he wants to defend the dignity of women. JR's Film has been nominated for the Camera d'Or in 2010.

• At the same time, he began the project „The Wrinkles of the City “, for which he purposely selected cities, which experienced a large change, like Cartagena in Spain, Shanghai, Los Angeles and Berlin.

• In 2011 JR won the TED Prize and on that very same year, he started the campaign „InSideOut“: an international art project, which offers people around the world the possibility to share their ideas of dividing projects and experiences with everyone by sticking their own portrait on a wall.

Barbara

Barbara

Barbara – that's how he or she is called,  however, nobody really knows since this (let's say probably female) streetartist from Germany wants to stay completely anonymous and doesn't want to tell anything about her identity. Anonymity to her means freedom and she wants her art to be rated by itself and not by who she is.

Her street art can be admired in Berlin, but after she moved to Heidelberg for private reasons you can see her works in that new location as well. She´s also known beyond the city limits, seeing as her fanbase on Facebook is rather big; also, numerous interviews were made in Germany as well as in Austria by „Spiegel“, „Stern“, „dem Kurier“ and other magazines.

The main point of her work is to comment or estrange road and evidence signs, advertising or graffiti by sticking on own notes of paper. So you see signs like „Plakate ankleben verboten“ being answered with a „Das respektiere ich zu 100%. Doch wie hätte ich dir das mitteilen sollen, ohne ein Plakat hinzukleben?“ or „Ausfahrt Tag und Nacht freihalten“ changing to „Rassisten Tag und Nacht Mund halten.“ (Pictures and translations can be seen below.)

Her comments sometimes have a political background, but oftentimes they're simply funny.

Her conjunction to streetart already started while she was a small child when her grandfather told her about the meaning of twisted crosses.

Young Barbara decides to draw windmills of them.
Since then she has kept her enthusiasm for her art and of course she's always ecxited about comments and feedback that she's getting on her work. She earns a lot of positive feedback with many of her facebook-posts, with politic-criticizing posts there are often big discussions which seem precious to her.

The fact that her mostly on paper written comments cant´t resist opponents or the rain and consequently dissappear within a few days or months, sometimes even hours, doesn't matter to her. As long as it is immortalized on fFcebook and seen by her fans she is contented.

"Keep driveway clear day and night!" turns into "Racists keep your mouths shut day and night!"



Sign on top: "Post no bills."
Sign below: "I respect that to 100%. But how was I supposed to tell you that without posting a bill?"