The French artist JR has brought photos of children he met on visits to refugee camps in locations including Rwanda and Greece to Turin in northern Italy. The exhibition runs until July 16.
The exhibition ‘Déplacé∙e∙s’ (displaced) at the Gallerie d'Italia of Intesa Sanpaolo in Turin's Piazza San Carlo opened on Thursday (February 9). With the show, artist JR -- who has more than 1.7 million followers on Instagram and whose work interweaves photography, public art and social commitment -- aims to reflect on one of the most important issues of our times: forced migration. His work focuses in particular on the experiences of refugee children.
The show -- which is JR's first personal exhibition in Italy -- will run until July 16.
Ahead of the opening, JR's photos were part of a large performance in a central square in Turin. A large group of people unveiled banners showing five refugee children on Tuesday (February 7). JR shared a video, shot from above, of the performance on Instagram.
The artist met the children during visits to refugee camps in Ukraine, Rwanda, Mauritania, Colombia and Greece.
In presenting his exhibition, JR said that the world needs artists and that he had grown up in the banlieues of Paris. "My art was born there," he said, noting that he had not received formal training at any academy and that he had instead started out creating graffiti on walls.
The exhibition in Turin covers a large area of about 4,000 square meters (for comparison: a standard football field is roughly 7,100 square meters). It includes an optical illusion that visitors are invited to interact with, underground rooms with videos, photos, wooden sculptures and a backdrop of large canvases with the photos of the children, and a video installation where visitors can go on "journeys" to other parts of the world.