TED Announcing the 2011 TEDPrize Winner: JR
Geschreven op 24-11-2010 - Erik van Erne. Geplaatst in Communicatie, Mensenrechten
JR, a moving and innovative artist who exhibits freely in the world’s streets, has been named the recipient of the 2011 TED Prize — an award granting $100,000 and something much bigger: a wish to change the world with the support of the TED community. JR represents a new chapter in the TED Prize. While a seemingly unconventional recipient, his work matches the creativity and innovative spirit of TED’s community, and his art inspires people to view the world differently –- and want to change it for the better.
JR is creates what might be called “pervasive art.” Working with a team of volunteers in various urban environments, he mounts enormous black-and-white photo canvases that spread on the buildings of the slums around Paris, on the walls in the Middle East, on broken bridges in Africa, and across the favelas of Brazil. These images become part of the local landscape and capture people’s attention and imagination around the world. See also this slideshow by the New York Times
In Rio, he turned hillsides into dramatic visual landscape by applying images to the facades of favela homes. In Kenya, for his project “Women Are Heroes,” he turned Kibera into a stunning gallery of local faces. And in Israel and Palestine, he mounted photos of a rabbi, imam and priest on walls across the region –- including the wall separating Israel from the West Bank.
JR remains anonymous -– never showing his full face, revealing his name, or explaining his huge portraits –- to allow for an encounter between the subject and passers-by. “JR’s mind-blowing creations have inspired people to see art where they wouldn’t expect it and create it when they didn’t know they could,” said TED Prize Director Amy Novogratz.
Over the course of the next months, JR will be working with the TED Prize team to develop an auducious wish that will involve the world in a brand new piece of art. The wish will be announced at TED2011 in Long Beach, California, at the end of February.
Erik van Erne zegt:
24 november 2010 om 05:19 | Permalink
Reportage sur le projet 28 Millimetres Women a Morro da Providencia – 2009
Erik van Erne zegt:
24 november 2010 om 05:27 | Permalink
FACE2FACE: When we met in 2005, we decided to go together in the Middle-East to figure out why Palestinians and Israelis couldn’t find a way to get along together. We then traveled across the Israeli and Palestinian cities without speaking much. Just looking to this world with amazement.
This holy place for Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This tiny area where you can see mountains, sea, deserts and lakes, love and hate, hope and despair embedded together.
After a week, we had a conclusion with the same words: these people look the same; they speak almost the same language, like twin brothers raised in different families.
A religious covered woman has her twin sister on the other side. A farmer, a taxi driver, a teacher, has his twin brother in front of him. And he his endlessly fighting with him.
It’s obvious, but they don’t see that. We must put them face to face. They will realize. We want that, at last, everyone laughs and thinks when he sees the portrait of the other and his own portrait.
The Face2Face project is to make portraits of Palestinians and Israelis doing the same job and to post them face to face, in huge formats, in unavoidable places, on the Israeli and the Palestinian sides.
In a very sensitive context, we need to be clear. We are in favor of a solution for which two countries, Israel and Palestine would live peacefully within safe and internationally recognized borders. All the bilateral peace projects (Clinton/Taba, Ayalon/Nussibeh, Geneva Accords) are converging in the same direction. We can be optimistic.
We hope that this project will contribute to a better understanding between Israelis and Palestinians. Today, “Face to face” is necessary. Within a few years, we will come back for “Hand in hand”.