Inspiration [ PART 1 ]

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 I've come across an artist who really inspired me from the work of his very own personal project that has grown into a huge international art project. 

"JR" - the controversial artist & creator of inside out

 

 

A controversial French artist, who goes by the name “JR” (doesn’t reveal his real name” created an project called “Portrait of a generation” in 2006.   He printed portraits of “thugs” in huge formats, and illegally posted them all over various districts of Paris and eventually wrapped the Paris city hall building with all these massively scaled photos.  Also in 2007 he created the biggest illegal exhibition ever which was called “Face 2 Face”.  He posted again huge portraits of Israelis and Palestinians face to face in 8 Palestinian and Israeli cities.  He also did some other big projects in 2008 and 2010.  In 2011 he won a TED prize from TED TALKS.  The project that really caught my attention in terms of my personal project was the one currently going on right now called “Inside out”.  This is a huge international art project that he created, which allows people from all over the world to take there portrait pictures of form a group of people and have there pictures taken which then gets printed at a large format and send back to them so they can post them around there community or city, to support a cause or idea, or share there experience.  

 In December 2012, over 120,000 people from over 108 countries had gotten involved.  In other words –this is one massive personal project consisting and made up of thousands of smaller personal projects branching off from it to support ideas and share awareness of what ever subject or issue or experience the participant wishes to share.  I think its quite amazing how his small personal projects gradually grew into creating such a powerful one that reaches people all over the world and allows them too, to get involved and “become” the artist.  I really loved his idea of spreading this concept to so many people and getting them involved.  

I don’t plan to create my personal project like the scale JR has managed to, especially not with the time frame we have been given.  What I would like to do is reach as many people I can in my life, in terms of getting the fingerprints.  The fingerprints will be the core material that makes up what my artwork IS.  In a way, it’s basically a way of saying that all the people I collected fingerprints from, ARE the artwork.  JR reached many people on an international scale to inspire them to make personal projects with the huge printed portraits.  The act of him reaching so many people WAS a huge part of what the personal project was.  So I hope I convey the same kind of message, but within my community… that because I went out and collected some identification from all these people, therefore, THEY make up my personal project.  They are involved in my project by simply inking their thumb and placing it on paper.  The people ARE my personal project.