Perrotin welcomes renowned public artist and photographer JR to its new gallery at Claridge’s until May 3rd, with an exhibition of two recent ongoing series about the global refugee crisis. Outposts brings together works from Déplacé·e·s, a project JR started in 2022, and an interconnected body of work, Les Enfants d’Ouranos.

JR made Déplacé·e·s in collaboration with refugee populations he traveled to meet in Ukraine, Rwanda, Mauritania, Greece, and Colombia. Aerial photographs – visible from the sky – printed giant portraits of children on 120 foot-long banners, which were then carried by people around refugee camps and cities, an act of reclamation for the innocence of childhood, and for their lost identities. Their monumental scale and size, and the collective act of carrying them, become a commemorative and celebratory moment in itself.

Known for his social and political themes, JR’s Les Enfants d’Ouranos – referring to the primordial Greek god of the sky who fathered the Titans, the first gods— transfers negatives of each portrait photograph onto reclaimed wood, reinforced with black ink. The silhouettes, which appear to glow, evoke classical religious art, mysterious and divine, transcending the often difficult realities in which they live.