Inside Out: The People's Art Project

A celebration of 15 years of the largest participatory art project in the world, created by French artist JR, known for his public art installations

In 2011, JR, the enigmatic French artist behind some of the world’s most thought-provoking large-scale public projects, posed a question: ‘What if we gave everyday people the tools to share their faces, their stories, their truths, as works of art?’ Not to hang in museums or galleries, but to paste on the walls of their own cities.

Inside Out, which started as an art experiment, soon grew into a global movement. Using his own artistic practices as inspiration, JR’s monumental project helps communities to gain a voice by displaying black-and-white portraits of everyday , and often marginalized, people in large-scale public installations.

Inside Out: The People’s Art Project celebrates fifteen years of the largest participatory art project in the world; one that has seen more than half a million ordinary people across more than 150 countries lend their face to the cause. It delves into the creative process behind these artworks and shares stories about how the project has served as a vehicle for social change, community building, and education.

Featuring more than 350 photographs, including both portraits of participants and behind-the-scenes images that capture the creation and realization of works at historic landmarks such as the Pyramids of Giza, Times Square, Tower Bridge, and even the North Pole, this book is a definitive record of what has mattered to people across the world since 2011.

Case studies of key projects explore the incredible stories the movement has inspired, from the photography students who captured and displayed thousands of portraits of the elderly in Italy to combat the isolation of the Covid-19 shutdowns, to the women celebrating the power of motherhood in Brazil, and the incarcerated population of a high security prison in California transforming their yard from a place of hostility to one of collaboration.

Inside Out is testament to the idea that individual faces can become a collective voice. It is a source of inspiration, a visual record of public action, and a celebration of human connection which will appeal to photography enthusiasts, social historians, and all fans of JR’s extraordinary artistic vision.