JR is the French counterpart to Britain’s Banksy—a street artist whose work relies entirely on its surroundings, though JR tends to work on a grander scale. The larger-than-life child peaking over America’s southern border wall? That’s him. The rock quarry engulfing Paris’s Louvre? Also him. JR’s work is about optical illusion, taking places and objects we know well and transforming them to make a point—the disaster that is U.S. immigration policy, for one, or the pyramids’ history in stone. Next up? The artist reinterprets the facade of Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi. It’s a fitting location for a work whose theme is the coronavirus and culture in the time of lockdown. —J.V.

JR: The Wound was featured in the March 27, 2021 issue of Air Mail. Read on