THE STANDING MARCH
In “The Standing MARch”, with the projection of 500 people onto the historic façade of the National Assembly in Paris, JR and American filmmaker Darren Aronofsky address the 25,000 delegates who gathered at the UN Climate Change Conference in 2015. Due to a terrorist attack in Paris three weeks earlier, protest marches were banned in Paris and so the work became a silent march.
JR AND DARREN ARONOFSKY
JR is a French artist known for monumental public art that challenges perceptions and sparks dialogue. His work transforms walls from barriers into spaces for social connection. His breakthrough project, Portrait of a Generation (2004-06), highlighted media bias by pasting exaggerated portraits of Parisian youth. He later expanded globally, amplifying voices in conflict zones. In Face 2 Face (2007), he paired portraits of Israelis and Palestinians with the same profession, pasting them along the Separation Wall.
His large-scale installations include Kikito (2017), depicting a toddler peering over the US- Mexico border, and The Gun Chronicles (2018), a Time magazine cover featuring 245 voices on U.S. gun debate. From 2019 to 2022, he collaborated with incarcerated men in Tehachapi prison to create art inside a supermax facility.
A multimedia artist, JR integrates film, audio, and dance into his work. He co-directed the Oscar-nominated Faces, Places (2017) with Agnès Varda and explored his process in the Emmy-nominated Paper & Glue (2021). In 2023, he transformed Paris’s Palais Garnier into a stage for 153 dancers performing on scaffolding before 25,000 spectators.
LINKS
FEATURED IMAGE
JR, Darren Aronofsky: The Standing MARch. Paris 2015. Photo: JR.
PROTESTS BY NIGHT: LIGHT FOR FREEDOM
Documentations of Art Projects — curated by Thomas Schielke.
