ELLIS by JR

“Talking about the past is the best way to understand the present and to approach our future,” said the Paris-born artist JR. Known for his oversized black-and-white public installations, JR recently completed a new project on Ellis Island, which forms the subject of his fourteen-minute film “Ellis.” Directed by JR, scripted by Eric Roth, and starring Robert De Niro.

“Talking about the past is the best way to understand the present and to approach our future”

“When I started working on ‘Ellis,’ the refugee crisis had not yet reached its current peak,” JR said. “Walking around the abandoned hospital on Ellis Island, I could feel the presence of the hundreds of thousands of people who passed through, and of the countless ones who didn’t make it and got turned back. I look for what’s often missing in today’s media coverage. I want to find the story behind each person who left his or her country. I want to know what made them leave everything and everyone behind, even when they knew they’d never be able to come back. It takes so much courage. There were immigrants in Ellis a hundred years ago, there are migrants now, and there will be some in a hundred years, so we have to do what we can to try to relate to each individual story.”

In August 2014, JR was invited to work on the abandoned part of Ellis Island. This island, next to the Statue of Liberty, is very symbolic - the gateway to the United States for 12 million immigrants, from 1892 to 1954. On the south side of the island, the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital has been abandoned since 1954. JR revisited the archives of Ellis Island and created many installations in these buildings so full in stories. This permanent exhibition has been open to the public since October 2014.

The short narrative film, ELLIS, awakens our collective memory. Leaving their past behind them, immigrants fleeing poverty, discrimination, dictatorship arrived there. Ellis Island was the gateway to the United States for millions of immigrants. Upon arrival, they were processed, approved or denied access. Due to sickness or simply tiredness, many were placed in the hospital. A purgatory of sorts, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, where thousands of men, women and children awaited their fate.

ELLIS tells the forgotten story of these immigrants who built America while questioning about those who currently seek the same opportunities and safety in this country and other parts of the world as Europe.

The short film stars Academy Award Winner Robert De Niro, was written by Academy Award winner Eric Roth and directed by the artist JR whose Unframed art installations in the abandoned Hospital complex serve as the set for this powerful and timely film.

Here is a trailer for the film, along with exclusive images of JR’s installations on Ellis Island and his shoot with De Niro.

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Robert De Niro on set among a collage of JR’s portraits. Ellis by JR. Images and all photographs courtesy JR-art.net. All rights reserved.

Ellis by JR. Images and all photographs courtesy JR-art.net. All rights reserved.

JR and Robert De Niro on set. Ellis by JR. Images and all photographs courtesy JR-art.net. All rights reserved.

Robert De Niro and JR on set. Ellis by JR. Images and all photographs courtesy JR-art.net. All rights reserved.

Poster. Ellis by JR. Images and all photographs courtesy JR-art.net. All rights reserved.

Doctors and nurses performing surgery in an operating room in the Ellis Island hospital.Ellis by JR. Images and all photographs courtesy JR-art.net. All rights reserved.

Portraits of children treated in the Ellis Island hospital. Ellis by JR. Images and all photographs courtesy JR-art.net. All rights reserved.

A Czech grandmother on Ellis Island. Ellis by JR. Images and all photographs courtesy JR-art.net. All rights reserved.

An immigrant family views the Statue of Liberty from the Ellis Island Immigration Station. An immigrant family views the Statue of Liberty from Ellis Island. Ellis by JR. Images and all photographs courtesy JR-art.net. All rights reserved.

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More information

Jean René. JR

JR (Jean René) was born in France in 1983 and currently works in Paris and New York. He exhibits freely in public sites in cities around world. His work mixes Art and Act, talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit. After finding a camera in the Paris metro in 2001, he traveled Europe to meet those who express themselves on walls and facades, and pasted their portraits in the streets, undergrounds and rooftops of Paris.

Between 2004 and 2006, he created the series “Portrait of a Generation”. In 2007, with Marco, he made Face 2 Face, the biggest illegal exhibition ever. JR posted huge portraits of Israelis and Palestinians face to face in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities.

In 2008, he embarked on a long international trip for “Women Are Heroes”, in which he underlines the dignity of women who are often the targets of conflicts. That year he also created “The Wrinkles of the City” in Cartagena, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Havana, Berlin and Istanbul. In 2010, his film “Women Are Heroes” was presented at Cannes Film Festival. The same year, JR created “Unframed”, a project in which he uses images that are not his, and reframes them in a new context, on a larger scale.

In 2011 he received the TED Prize, after which he created “Inside Out”. In a collaboration with New York City Ballet, he used the language of ballet to tell his story of the riots that happened in the French suburbs in 2005 and created “Les Bosquets”, a ballet and eponymous short film whose music was composed by Woodkid, Pharrell Williams and Hans Zimmer and which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival.

In 2014, he created an installation with 4,000 faces in and on the Pantheon in Paris. The concept of crowd will be used for a video installation at the CAC Malaga, and on the façade of Assemblée Nationale and other monuments in Paris during the COP 21 summit at the end of 2015. The same year, he worked in the abandoned hospital of Ellis Island and directed the short movie ELLIS, starring Robert DeNiro. In 2016 he was invited by the Louvre and made the famous pyramid disappear through a surprising anamorphosis. He worked in Rio de Janeiro during the 2016 Olympics and created new gigantic sculptural installations using scaffolding, at the scale of the city, putting an emphasis on the beauty of the athletic movement.

His latest projects include a museum exhibition dedicated to children at Centre Pompidou, a permanent collaboration with the Brazilian artists Os Gemeos at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, in a space used to store stolen pianos during World War II, and a film with Agnès Varda, co-directing a movie with the Nouvelle Vague icon, traveling around France to meet people and discuss their visions. This Spring, JR will unveil a giant mural at Palais de Tokyo, in connection with a new project based in Clichy-Montfermeil. JR is represented by Galerie Perrotin since 2011; he has had shows in Paris, Hong-Kong, Miami and New York. In 2013, JR got his first museum retrospectives in Tokyo (Watari-Um) and CAC in Cincinnati, followed by Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden in 2014 and HOCA Foundation in Hong-Kong in 2015.