On March 2, 2011, JR won the TED prize at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and called for the creation of a global participatory art project with the potential to change the world. This project is called INSIDE OUT.

Inspired by JR’s large‐format street "pastings", INSIDE OUT gives everyone the opportunity to share their portrait and make a statement for what they stand for. It is a global platform for people to share their untold stories and transform messages of personal identity into works of public art.

Each INSIDE OUT group action around the world is documented, archived and exhibited online. Nearly 200,000 people from more than 112 countries & territories have participated.

The INSIDE OUT project has traveled from Ecuador to Nepal, from Mexico to Palestine, inspiring group actions on varied themes such as hope, diversity, gender-based violence, climate change... Discover the extent of the project through some selected actions.

JR exhibits freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not typical museum visitors. In 2006, he created Portrait of a Generation, portraits of suburban "thugs" that he posted, in huge formats, in the bourgeois districts of Paris. This illegal project became "official" when the Paris City Hall wrapped its building with JR’s photos. In 2007, with Marco, he made Face 2 Face, the biggest illegal exhibition ever. JR posted huge portraits of Israelis and Palestinians face to face in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities. In 2008, he embarked on a long international trip for Women Are Heroes, in which he underlines the dignity of women who are often the targets of conflicts, and created The Wrinkles of the City. In 2010, his film Women Are Heroes was presented at Cannes. In 2011 he received the TED Prize, after which he created Inside Out, an international participatory art project that allows people worldwide to get their picture taken and paste it to support an idea and share their experience.

He has since created the Unframed project where images that exhibit the past of a neighborhood or city are interpreted and re-contextualized in present day through JR's pastings. In 2013, his film based off his project, Inside Out: The People's Art Project premiered at Tribeca FIlm Festival. Inside Out continued to grow with Photobooth trucks bringing the process directly to the streets in locations such as New York, Amsterdam, London, and Paris. As of April 2014, nearly 200,000 people from more than 112 countries have participated. In 2014, he collaborated with the New York City Ballet for their Art Series, and choreographed his own ballet based off his beginnings.

As he remains anonymous and doesn’t explain his huge full-frame portraits of people making faces, JR leaves the space empty for an encounter between the subject/protagonist and the passer-by/interpreter. That is what JR's work is about, raising questions.

▲ 100 Portraits, June 2013 Source : home page of Inside Out

 

▲ 100 Portraits, June 2013 Source : home page of Inside Out

 

▲ 100 Portraits, June 2013 Source : home page of Inside Out

Republic of Korea has been a single race country, or a Dan-il minjok guk ga (단일민족국가), for thousands of years. However, recently, the number of foreigners and different ethnic groups have been increasing rapidly. We- a group of Koreans, Filipinos, and Americans- want to raise awareness of the foreigners living in Korea. It can get difficult at times to be accepted by a society with an ethnically homogeneous history, but Korea is becoming a melting pot and we want to celebrate that with the world! All of us exist here-- with a Seoul!

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