12 minute read
Marta Richero, Italy
By Marta Richero, Italy
Advertisement
Introduction
Development has contributed to the increase of those challenges that we have to deal with today, such as climate change, economic globalisation, poverty, and inequality. Indeed, the dominant discourses and practices of development have excluded the knowledge, the voices, and the real problems of those countries of the Global South (Asia, Africa, and Latin America) that, paradoxically, it should have helped to develop (Escobar, 2007). Therefore, mainstream development - understood as those theories and practices promoted by the West to impose and maintain a political, economic, and cultural dominance over the “Third World” (Escobar, 1995) - can't be an option anymore. We have to unmake and remake this concept by looking at new narratives, new ways of thinking and doing (Escobar, 1995 and Escobar, 2008 quoted in Harcourt, 2019, pp. 247-248). We need to find new strategies to establish alternatives to development that can guide us to a systemic transformation. Indeed, many of these alternatives are already put into practice by movements, activists, intellectuals, and, I would add, artists (Escobar, 2007). In the next paragraphs, I’m going to analyse the work of the artist JR and some of his most famous projects. First, bringing the example of the “Women Are Heroes” project, I will show why, in my opinion, we can consider JR’s way of thinking and working as an alternative to mainstream development (1). I will then focus on the groundbreaking Inside Out Project as a form of storytelling and a practice of body politics (2). To conclude, and in reference to the “Face2Face” project, I will also reflect on the role of art as means of transformation (3).
Thinking and acting alternatively
JR is a French artist or, as he defines himself, an “urban artivist”, together an artist and an activist. Indeed, his projects are not just about art; they are much more. He started doing graffiti in Paris when he was 15 years old, and is now renowned worldwide for illegally pasting in cities across the world oversized black-and-white portraits of individuals printed on paper (Ferdman, 2012,). His works show a different perspective; he takes pictures from a strange angle and then pastes them at a massive scale in the most improbable places trying to bring our attention to people and facts that we spend most of our lives not caring about, maybe, willing to avoid (Cadwalladr, 2015). In other words, his works seek to open our eyes on what the dominant discourse and practices of development and the media have made invisible. In all his projects, JR spends months on the site, getting to know the local community, and once he starts the project, he works alongside the local people. In this way, they actively contribute during the whole artistic process, taking the pictures, deciding the perfect place where to position them, and finally pasting them (Ferdman, 2012). Moreover, his anonymity has a double explanation: strategically, not to be recognised, and symbolically, to let the works be connected just to the local people and their message. In this way, the artworks represent just the individuals or communities who are ignored or misrepresented by the mainstream media. Indeed, JR and his team always left immediately after the end of a project. Thus, the media and those who want to know about the work have to go directly to the local people and get an explanation from them. This is what happened with the project “Women Are Heroes” (2008 - 2011). The project had the purpose to underline the pivotal role in society of women and to tell their invisible and heroic stories marked by
poverty, local crime, violence, and war by pasting their expressive portraits in unexpected places of their villages (JR-website). In Kenya, for example, the eyes and faces of local women were pasted on the rooftops of their houses11 and on a working train (Figure 1); while in Brazil, on the buildings of a favela’s mountainside (Figure 2).
Figure 1. 28 Millimètres, Women Are Heroes, Action in Kibera Slum, General View, Kenya, 2009. (Source: Women Are Heroes, Kenya, 2009)
Figure 2. 28 Millimètres, Women Are Heroes, Action in Favela Morro da Providencia, Favela by day, Rio de Janeiro, 2008. (Source: Women Are Heroes, Brazil, 2010)
Consequently, these giant artworks captured the media's attention, and due to the JR’s disappearance and the absence of more information, they were forced to go to talk with the community where instead of an explanation, they found many stories. Thus, as he affirmed in his speech, this project creates a bridge between the media and these anonymous women (JR, 2011).
However, I consider his way of thinking and working as an alternative not only because his projects are a means of resistance to the dominant discourse reproduced by mainstream development but also because they concretely embody and put into practice an anti-capitalist
11 In this case, a water-resistant material was used instead of paper and glue, which also proved useful to strengthen their rooftops, thus protecting them from the rain.
mindset. Indeed, he refuses to work with brands or institutions or to use corporate sponsors (Cadwalladr, 2015). In this way, he has no responsibility to anyone but himself and the subjects of the portraits (JR, 2011). Thus, in a capitalist system where everything is monetised and depends on the market, he manages to act free from it and, moreover, to materially dismantle it with his works. Indeed, in cities where the only images as big as JR’s artworks are the advertising poster, he replaces products with people, returning the cities to their communities (Cadwalladr, 2015). In other words, since capitalism appropriated the natural and the human environment through urbanism moved by the logic of domination and profit maximisation, with his works he allows people to take back their agency by re-occupying and re-imagining the city (Debord, 1976, quoted in Ferdman, 2012, p. 24).
Turning the world inside out
In 2011, after winning the TED prize, he created the “Inside Out Project”, “the largest global participatory art project” (Inside Out Project, 2011). Through this platform, he gives the opportunity to everyone to be an “artivist”: people all around the world can print their portraits to support an idea, a project, or an action, or just to be seen or tell their stories. The process is easy: you take a picture of yourself, upload it online, and then it will be sent back to you in a black-and-white oversized poster that you will paste in your local community (Ferdman, 2012, p). In this way, he could completely take himself out and let the local people be the only leading actors. Indeed, this is also called “the people’s art project”, because it gives people complete agency. Since it was launched, more than 400,000 people across 138 countries have participated in the project and over 2,000 actions have been created about different topics, such as education, racism, feminism, climate change, diversity, poverty, immigration, indigenous rights (Inside Out Project, 2011). It’s considered a “global” art project because it’s spread worldwide but it’s a completely local phenomenon: it’s the sum of many local projects created by local people to respond to local or global problems (Ferdman, 2012). The portraits can be considered a form of “urban storytelling”; in the city spaces, they recreate the untold narratives that were erased from the dominant Eurocentric discourse (Ferdman, 2012). For instance, one of the actions of the Inside Out Project - “Indigenise Your Eyes” launched in October 2018 raised awareness of the history and current status ofAmerican Indians in Boulder (USA) (Figure 4). It gave a voice to the local indigenous community.
Figure 4. Inside Out Project, Indigenize Your Eyes, 50 portraits, Action in Boulder, United States, October 2018. (Source: Indigenize Your Eyes, 2018)
Another example is “La Gran Rebelión”, an action of 140 portraits that took place in Cuzco (Perù) in August 2021. This, more than a participatory art project, was an act with which the community re-affirmed the many indigenous voices and lives eliminated by colonialism.
Figure 5. Inside Out Project, La Gran Rebelión, 140 portraits, Action in Cusco, Peru, August 2021. (Source: "LA GRAN REBELIÓN", 2021)
Therefore, since individuals and entire communities claim control over their biological, social, and cultural embodied experiences through the artistic performance of their portraits, in my opinion, these actions can be considered practices of body politics. Indeed, in an indirect way, they use their faces and expressions as “a revolutionary political and expressive medium” (Harcourt, 2019). Additionally, since more than 300 actions are school projects, the Inside Out Project has also had an impact on education (Inside Out Project, 2011). For example, in September 2020, 80 portraits showing fear, joy, anger, and astonishment about our planet were pasted on the Prins Henrik school of Copenhagen (Denmark) to fight climate change. Indeed, since education has a central role in development (Morarji, 2014), it’s essential to include it in the alternative practices to equip the new generations with the skills, knowledge, and agency to put in practice a cultural and ecological transition. And in this case, the change that these projects bring lies in seeing students not anymore as passive objects whose heads have to be filled with mainstream knowledge but as active subjects that want to learn, participate, and act.
Can art change the world?
When JR won the TED Prize 2011, they asked him to make a wish to change the world. Thus, he started to wonder: “Can art change the world?”. However, as he explains in his related speech: “Art is not supposed to change the world, to change practical things, but to change perceptions. Art can change the way we see the world.” (JR, 2011).
According to John Dewey (1934), art is a medium of transformation (Lumenta, Ariefiansyah, and Nurhadist, 2017). Materially, it can transform a block of marble into a sculpture, a canvas into a painting, or, in this case, a city landscape into an artwork. However, it also has intangible effects: it transforms the people involved in the artistic process (Lumenta, Ariefiansyah, and Nurhadist, 2017). Indeed, some anthropologists using participatory and creative engagement in the arts in their research have shown how it enables individuals to interact and collaborate (Lumenta, Ariefiansyah, and Nurhadist, 2017). An example is the project “Face2Face” (2007), the biggest illegal urban art exhibition in the world. It consisted in pasting next to each other on both the Israeli and the Palestinian sides of the wall the portraits of Palestinians and Israelis that held the same job (such as teacher, taxi-driver, lawyer, chef,) and doing a funny face for the camera (Ferdman, 2012). JR wanted to demonstrate how things were a bit distant from what the media showed (JR, 2011). Indeed, they were “so different” from each other that looking at the pasted portraits, the local people couldn't say who was the Israeli and the Palestinian. Indeed, art nullifies cultural, social, and economic differences and controversies allowing us to see each other just as artists and, above all, as humans. Art visually reminds us how much we are similar rather than different.
Figure 6. 28 Millimètres, Face 2 Face, Holy Triptych, 2006. (Source: Face 2 Face, 2007)
In particular, the iconic black-and-white portraits are transformative in two aspects: for the people photographed in the perception of themselves and for those who observe them in the perception that they have of “the others”. Indeed, in the first case, the portraits allow the individuals to be empowered, to develop a sense of awareness and self-respect, to achieve agency, and in some cases, also redemption. In the second one, they can change how we see differences and decide to deal with them. In other words, they have the power to create a dialogue, a bridge, a connection between different people; they have the power to humanise (Torgovnick, 2017).
Conclusion
Moving away from the mainstream road and relying more on ordinary people’s ideas and actions that contribute to create more humane and culturally and ecologically sustainable worlds, JR’s projects can represent an example of how to move towards the new postdevelopment era (Shiva, 1993; Rahnema with Bawtree, 1997; Rist, 1997; Esteva and Prakash, 1999 quoted in Escobar, 2007). JR’s works open your eyes to how more complex and beautiful our world is instead of how the media and the mainstream discourse depict it to you. They show us a pluralistic view of the world, answering to the Zapatista call for creating “a world where many worlds fit” and resisting the dualistic view perpetuated by development. In other worlds, breaking the dominant discourse and giving space to the untold and erased narratives, overcoming barriers, resisting the logic of the capitalistic system, taking back the cities, working at the same time globally and locally, these projects contribute to connecting our humanity, using literally just paper and glue (JR, 2011). To conclude, these projects represent a post-development resistance because they question the main assumptions of the mainstream development order and put into practice an alternative set of ethics and values which have at their core the valorisation of what makes us humans (Harcourt, 2019).
References
“80 PORTRAITS POUR LA PLANÈTE” (2020), Inside Out Project [online]. Available at: https://www.insideoutproject.net/en/explore/group-action/80-portraits-pour-la-planete (Accessed: 06 December 2022). Cadwalladr, C. (2015) “Interview. JR: ‘I realized I was giving people a voice’”, The Guardian [online], 11 October. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/oct/11/artist-jr-i-realised-i-wasgiving-people-a-voice-les-bosquets-french-banksy (Accessed: 4 January 2022). Escobar, A. (2007) “Post-development as concept and social practice” in A. Ziai (ed)
Exploring Post-Development: theory and practice, problems and perspectives, London:
Routledge, pp. 18-31. “Face2Face” (2007), JR-Website [online]. Available at: https://www.jrart.net/projects/israel-palestine (Accessed: 06 December 2022). Ferdman, B. (2012) “Urban Dramaturgy: The Global Art Project of JR”, PAJ: A Journal of
Performance and Art, 34(3), pp. 12–26. Harcourt, W. (2019) “Body Politics and Postdevelopment” in Postdevelopment in Practice,
London: Routledge, pp. 247-262. “Indigenize your eyes” (2018), Inside Out Project [online]. Available at: https://www.insideoutproject.net/en/explore/group-action/indigenize-your-eyes (Accessed: 06 December 2022). Inside Out Project (2011). Available at: https://www.insideoutproject.net/en/ (Accessed: 29
December 2021). JR (2011) “My wish: use art to turn the world inside out”, TED [online]. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/jr_my_wish_use_art_to_turn_the_world_inside_out (Accessed: 2 January 2022). JR (2012) “One year of turning the world inside out”, TED [Online]. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/jr_one_year_of_turning_the_world_inside_out (Accessed: 2
January 2022). JR-website (2019). Available at: https://www.jr-art.net (Accessed: 29 December 2021). “LA GRAN REBELIÓN” (2021), Inside Out Project [online]. Available at: https://www.insideoutproject.net/en/explore/group-action/la-gran-rebelion (Accessed: 06
December 2022). Lumenta, D., Ariefiansyah, R. and Nurhadist, B. (2017) “Performing Out of Limbo:
Reflections on Doing Anthropology through Music with Oromo Refugees in Indonesia”,
Antropologi Indonesia, 38(1), pp. 51. Lugones, M. (2010) “Toward a decolonial feminism”, Hypatia, 25(4), pp. 742-759. Morarji, K. (2014) “Subjects of Development: Teachers, Parents and Youth Negotiating
Education in Rural North India”, European journal of development research, 26(2), pp. 175-189. Torgovnick, K. (2017) “Gallery: Powerful portraits of people who’ve been overlooked”, TED [online], 28 November. Available at: https://ideas.ted.com/powerful-portraits-ofpeople-whove-been-overlooked/ (Accessed: 2 January 2022). “Women Are Heroes, Brazil” (2010), JR-Website [online]. Available at: https://www.jrart.net/projects/rio-de-janeiro (Accessed: 06 December 2022). “Women Are Heroes, Kenya” (2009), JR-Website [online]. Available at: https://www.jrart.net/projects/woman-are-heroes-kenya (Accessed: 06 December 2022).
