How to unite people through art (with JR)
How to Be a Better Human
TED
4.1 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 27 June 2022
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Art can move us in deep, meaningful ways. A beautiful song, a good book, or a great film can change our perspectives and attitudes toward ideas, and sometimes people. Where does that magic come from–and how can we channel it when we’re creating? JR is an artist famed for his enormous black and white portraits that tell stories and adorn surfaces from the Louvre to the favelas of Brazil. His ambitious projects, like a recent massive mural outside a supermax prison in California or the boy who peers curiously over the wall at the Mexico–United States border, put a deeply human face to things we might have only read in the news while also highlighting and celebrating the connections between us humans. In this episode, JR talks about the importance of joy in his art-making process, speaks to the value of community and curiosity, and shares how his unique working style developed over the years.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ted Audio Collective. |
| 0:02.0 | Audio Collective. |
| 0:04.0 | You're listening to how to be a better human. |
| 0:10.0 | You're listening to how to be a better human. I'm your host Chris Duffy. Today on the show |
| 0:15.5 | we're talking to one of the most famous street artists in the world, J.R. |
| 0:20.0 | J.R. has got this iconic look where he's always wearing dark glasses and a hat so no one knows exactly what he looks like. |
| 0:25.4 | He's got this real aura of mystery around him. |
| 0:28.0 | And even if you've never seen a photo of J.R. even if you've never heard his name, |
| 0:32.0 | you've almost certainly seen J.R.'s work. |
| 0:34.0 | Whether it's a giant photograph of a baby that appears to be peering over the border wall |
| 0:38.6 | between Mexico and the United States, or the cover of Time magazine where 100 people in Leia of Ukraine are holding up |
| 0:45.6 | J.R.'s enormous canvas print of a young girl smiling and playing. That was an act of artistic |
| 0:51.1 | resistance that could be seen for miles by drone and airplane. |
| 0:54.8 | In JR's work, he takes photos of humans who are too often seen as powerless or invisible, |
| 1:00.0 | and he makes their images monumental and iconic. |
| 1:03.3 | The sheer scale of his art forces us to consider the stories of the people in the pictures. |
| 1:08.4 | We look into their eyes and we're pushed to reconsider our own perspectives. |
| 1:13.0 | So today on the podcast, we're going to be talking about how we can all use art |
| 1:17.0 | to connect to others, to see the world differently, and to take action. |
| 1:21.0 | Here's a clip from J.R.'s most recent TED Talk where he discusses his newest art project |
| 1:26.0 | which took place at a super max prison in California. |
| 1:28.6 | We arrived there and of course you know it's not that easy. You get there, it's like fences, electric fences, walls, and you add more walls and more people that check your ideas and, my God, I get all the way to the yard, and it's looked like some army guy with like bulletproof jackets and heavily armed who say all right this is going to be very simple |
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