JR

No doubt you will have seen the big poster of the black man holding a... CAMERA! (but yes I fell victim to it too and thought it was a gun) outside the Tate Modern as part of the street art exhibition, or if not, one of the six other installations dotted around London: Lexington St, Cordy House...

The artist- JR- is amazing. To me, his work represents what I feel urban street art is and should be about: activism, subversion, breaking the law: going against the rules- the rules of the law and the rules of society. Whilst JR's pieces in London at least do not break the law, his work encapsulates this essence. The poster on the Tate, Ladj Ly, for example is one of the most powerful and striking images I have seen in a long time that questions society and how it perceives people. It works as an uncomfortable reminder to not “judge a book by it’s cover”- or rather to take a bit of time and look at the cover properly.

Israelis next to Palestinians pulling faces:

For his project Women are Heroes, he focused on women in the West and East of Africa in difficult conditions. “By asking them to pull a face, JR shows the spark of life... The expressiveness of their faces testifies to their strength, their courage and their will to fight which keeps them going, keeps them alive”. Watch the video:

TRAILER " WOMEN ARE HEROES"
by JR