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JR JR
JR, The Chronicles of Kyoto, 2024
Scenography by Hiromitsu Konishi (miso)
Kyoto Station Bldg. North Wall
Free
Click here for details of Passport-Tickets and Single venue tickets.
French artist JR transforms public spaces around the world with powerful large-scale portraits of residents. His work spans continents and communities—from striking images of women’s eyes pasted across buildings in the favelas of Brazil or the shanty towns of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and India. To portraits of Palestinian and Israeli workers placed face to face on either side of the West Bank wall, challenging viewers to see shared humanity beyond political divides.
In Japan, following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, JR set up a mobile photo studio to capture A0-sized portraits of people living in affected areas, later displaying them in public spaces throughout the Tohoku region.
In his works, people are not spectators but active creators who shape the artworks and the landscape of their city. His public, almost monumental projects provoke questions and challenge passers-by to confront their own perceptions.
KYOTOGRAPHIE 2025 presents JR, Chronicle Kyoto 2024. Inspired by the Mexican mural artist Diego Rivera (1886-1957), in 2017 Chronicle project started, an immersive and impressive series of large-scale participatory murals. Each work entailed photographing and filming hundreds of people, alone or in groups, and then collaging their portraits together to create a narrative and highly realistic composition that dealt with a place or social issue. The project has previously been realised in the cities of Miami, New York, San Francisco and Paris.
In the autumn of 2024, JR and his team with the support of KYOTOGRAPHIE set up mobile studios at eight locations in Kyoto, including Kyoto Station, the plaza in front of Kyoto City Hall, on the Kamogawa Delta, and in the countryside of Ohara to create the Kyoto project. They captured the spirit of Kyoto through portraits of 505 people from all walks of life including geiko, tea masters, Buddhist monks, artisans, drag queens, and locals, each adding their presence to the city’s vibrant story. Simultaneously, they recorded each person’s story. These images were then woven into a dynamic collage that blends Kyoto’s rich urban tapestry, from historic machiya townhouses to contemporary architecture. The result is a monumental mural, 22.55 by 5 meters, set to transform the wall of the Kyoto Station Building into a celebration of the city's diversity and creativity.

The Chronicles of Kyoto, Close Up, Japan, 2024 © JR

The Chronicles of New York City, Domino Park, USA, 2020 © JR

Behind the Scenes: JR, The Chronicles of Kyoto, 2024 © Hiroshi Yamauchi
Fees 入場料
Free
There is also a special passport ticket that allows you to enter all venues once during the exhibition period. Click here for details.
artist アーティスト
JR JR
French artist JR first gained recognition with Portrait of a Generation (2004–06), a project that boldly challenged media-driven stereotypes of Parisian suburban youth by pasting their portraits across the city. From this activation JR has taken his work globally, using large-scale photography to spotlight overlooked communities and spark public conversation.
Whether it be pasting the faces of Israeli and Palestinian people on both sides of the Separation Wall (2007), the eyes of women on train cars in Kibera, Kenya (2009), or a giant toddler peeking over the US-Mexico border fence (2017), JR’s larger-than-life installations amplify the stories of everyday people and foster dialogue.
JR also has a rigorous studio art practice, creating gallery artworks that are exhibited internationally. He has had major retrospectives at the Brooklyn Museum (2019) and Maison Européenne de la Photographie (2018) as well as shown artworks and installations at the Venice Biennale (2022), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2019), and the NGV Triennial (2020).
Venue 会場
Kyoto Station Bldg. North Wall
- Closed on
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無休