JR & José Parlá: Wrinkles of the City, Havana, Cuba
Published by Damiani/Standard Press Text by Clara Astiasarán, Janet Batet, Michael Betancourt, Jeffrey Deitch.
JR and José Parlá’s street celebration of Cuba’s elders
Since 2004, the French artist JR has traveled the world flyposting colossal black-and-white portraits of ordinary citizens on the walls of city buildings. His most recent project, The Wrinkles of the City, began in Cartagena, Spain, where he photographed the city’s oldest inhabitants, imagining their wrinkles as metaphors of urban texture and history. He has subsequently reprised the project in Shanghai, China and Los Angeles. In May 2012, JR collaborates with American artist José Parlá on the latest iteration of The Wrinkles of the City: a huge mural installation in Havana, undertaken for the Havana Biennale, for which JR and Parlá photographed and recorded 25 senior citizens who had lived through the Cuban revolution, creating portraits which Parlá, who is of Cuban descent, interlaced with palimpsestic calligraphic writings and paintings. Parlá’s markings echo the distressed surfaces of the walls he inscribes, and offer commentary on the lives of Cuba’s elders; together, JR and Parlá’s murals marvelously animate a city whose walls are otherwise adorned only by images of its leaders. This volume features the portraits, short biographies of their subjects and photographs of their mural collaborations painted around Havana. A film documenting the project appears in 2013.
Based in Paris, JR exhibits freely in public sites in the cities around world. His projects include Portraits of a Generation (2004–2006), Face2Face (2007) and Women Are Heroes (2008). In 2011 he was awarded the TED Prize.
José Parlá studied painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, and the New World School of the arts in Miami, and lives and works in Brooklyn, new York. a recent project is a special commission for the Brooklyn Academy of Music. His most recent monograph is Walls, Diaries and Paintings (Hatje Cantz, 2011).
Featured image is reproduced from JR & José Parlá: Wrinkles of the City, Havana, Cuba.
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Marina Cashdan interviews painter Jose Parlá and street artist JR in her Memo From Miami for New York Times T Magazine about their collaboration on the streets of Havana published in the new book Wrinkles of the City: Havana, Cuba.Parlá: "Sometimes kids from the neighborhood would come and help us. It was emotional in a lot of ways, because being Cuban for me and working there, every voice I heard reminded me of my childhood." JR: "It generated a lot of discussion, and eventually people would come to their point of view. And that is part of the process of working in open air with the people, especially in a place where they have some news in the streets, but never in the way that visually takes over advertising." Read the full interview here. On December 8th from 7pm to 11pm Andre Balazs’s Standard Spa Miami Beach hosts a book signing for JR & Jose Parlá's Wrinkles of the City: Havana, Cuba (Damiani) at their pop-up Cuban cafe Cafecito Neptuno.
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FROM THE BOOK
"The subjects photographed for this project are anonymous passers-by, people whose age, faces and experiences emulate dramatically the architectural cracks. Wall and portrait are merged and confused in the ruinous scenario of Havana. Although the photograph has been conceived of and defended as an instrument of definition, representation and preservation of identity, understood as a historical reality and as a social and cultural entity, this experience constitutes a change, not only in formal, technical or stylistic terms, but also in ideological terms. The Wrinkles… adopts the restitution of the past as destiny; so that any reformulation of realism is supported by its documentary capacity. These portraits become the self-portrait of the observer. Each citizen of Havana recognizes their own wrinkles and fatigue; every footprint of time, to the extent that it is anonymous, is collective. In a country where the cult of official political image has been the only message, these murals raise the voice of the unknown and through that efficacy turn obscurity into anamnesis."
— Clara Astiasarán, excerpted from JR & José Parlá: Wrinkles of the City, Havana, Cuba
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FORMAT: Hbk, 11.75 x 11.75 in. / 160 pgs / illustrated throughout. LIST PRICE: U.S. $49.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $67.5 ISBN: 9788862082501 PUBLISHER: Damiani/Standard Press AVAILABLE: 10/31/2012 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: Out of stock TERRITORY: NA LA
JR & José Parlá: Wrinkles of the City, Havana, Cuba
Published by Damiani/Standard Press. Text by Clara Astiasarán, Janet Batet, Michael Betancourt, Jeffrey Deitch.
JR and José Parlá’s street celebration of Cuba’s elders
Since 2004, the French artist JR has traveled the world flyposting colossal black-and-white portraits of ordinary citizens on the walls of city buildings. His most recent project, The Wrinkles of the City, began in Cartagena, Spain, where he photographed the city’s oldest inhabitants, imagining their wrinkles as metaphors of urban texture and history. He has subsequently reprised the project in Shanghai, China and Los Angeles. In May 2012, JR collaborates with American artist José Parlá on the latest iteration of The Wrinkles of the City: a huge mural installation in Havana, undertaken for the Havana Biennale, for which JR and Parlá photographed and recorded 25 senior citizens who had lived through the Cuban revolution, creating portraits which Parlá, who is of Cuban descent, interlaced with palimpsestic calligraphic writings and paintings. Parlá’s markings echo the distressed surfaces of the walls he inscribes, and offer commentary on the lives of Cuba’s elders; together, JR and Parlá’s murals marvelously animate a city whose walls are otherwise adorned only by images of its leaders. This volume features the portraits, short biographies of their subjects and photographs of their mural collaborations painted around Havana. A film documenting the project appears in 2013.
Based in Paris, JR exhibits freely in public sites in the cities around world. His projects include Portraits of a Generation (2004–2006), Face2Face (2007) and Women Are Heroes (2008). In 2011 he was awarded the TED Prize.
José Parlá studied painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, and the New World School of the arts in Miami, and lives and works in Brooklyn, new York. a recent project is a special commission for the Brooklyn Academy of Music. His most recent monograph is Walls, Diaries and Paintings (Hatje Cantz, 2011).
