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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

JR: Tehachapi

June 4 – Aug 21, 2021
540 W 25th St, New York, NY 10001, United States

In 2004, in response to major riots, the French photographer JR installed huge images of young African immigrants in the suburbs of Paris. A year later he traveled East, where he fixed cheerful photographs of Israelis and Palestinians arm-in-arm along the dangerous Israeli-Palestinian border. Over the years, JR’s black-and-white photographic canvases and installations have turned up in all kinds of places—Paris’s Marais, Nairobi, Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, and the U.S.–Mexican border. This exhibition presents the works that came out of JR’s visit to the maximum-security prison in Tehachapi, California. Photographs, a video, and a wall pasting hold stories about borders, politics, and cultural identity. —E.C.

JR, “Tehachapi, Mountain, February 7, 2020, 10:10a.m., U.S.A.,” 2020 © JR, Courtesy Pace Gallery.