In May, he made Paris’ Louvre pyramid disappear. And now that the world’s eyes are trained on Brazil for the Olympics, French street artist JR has turned his attention to Rio de Janeiro, where he installed a handful of larger-than-life photographic portraits around the city.
JR
JR has brought his trademark brand of large-scale black-and-white photographic street art to 129 countries around the globe to date. But for the Rio installation he spent a year developing a new engineering technique that utilizes layers of scaffolding to create the impression that the photographic athletes are high-jumping off of tall buildings and diving into and swimming in the sea.
JR
The high-jumper is 27-year-old Sudanese Mohamed Younes Idriss, who lives and trains in Cologne, Germany, but missed out on qualifying for the games due to an injury, JR said on his Instagram page. “He still came to Rio and jumps over a building in Flamengo,” he said.
JR
