Why art is a tool for hope (with JR) | How to Be a Better Human

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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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. This is an episode from the TED Audio Collective podcast, How to Be a Better Human. For more episodes on how to be a little less terrible, follow How to Be a Better Human wherever you're listening to this.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hugh.
0:06.8	The artist JR gave a really powerful talk at TED 2022, which we are sharing on the TED.com homepage today.
0:14.0	But it was super visual. So instead of frustrating you all by sharing that audio here,
0:19.1	we asked Chris Duffy, host of the How to Be a Better
0:21.9	Human podcast, to sit down and talk with him instead. We hope you enjoy it. To see the talk, head
0:27.5	over to TED.com. And if you want more episodes of How to Be a Better Human, follow it wherever you're listening to this.
0:41.2	You're listening to How to Be a Better Human.
0:42.6	I'm your host, Chris Duffy.
0:48.0	Today on the show, we're talking to one of the most famous street artists in the world, J.R.
0:54.1	J.R.'s got this iconic look where he's always wearing dark glasses and a hat, so no one knows exactly what he looks like.
0:58.7	He's got this real aura of mystery around him. And even if you've never seen a photo of JR,
1:03.8	even if you've never heard his name, you've almost certainly seen JR's work. Whether it's a giant photograph of a baby that appears to be peering over the border wall between Mexico and
1:08.4	the United States, or the cover of Time magazine where
1:11.8	100 people in Leah of Ukraine are holding up JR's enormous canvas print of a young girl
1:16.8	smiling and playing.
1:18.3	That was an act of artistic resistance that could be seen for miles by drone and airplane.
1:23.6	In JR's work, he takes photos of humans who are too often seen as powerless or invisible,
1:28.5	and he makes their images monumental and iconic.
1:32.0	The sheer scale of his art forces us to consider the stories of the people in the pictures.
1:37.2	We look into their eyes, and we're pushed to reconsider our own perspectives.
1:42.0	So today on the podcast, we're going to be talking about how we can
1:45.0	all use art to connect to others, to see the world differently, and to take action. Here's a clip
	...

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