As part of PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography, Fed Square will be covered with over 300 faces of Victorians for the next three days.
The specific project is known as Inside Out, which has previously travelled through Ecuador and Nepal, across to Mexico then to Palestine. Now, it arrives in Melbourne after locals submitted their mugshot to the initial call-out back in the beginning of 2020—and being printed on rice paper, you can expect the mammoth installation to disappear within days.
The Inside Out project was seeded from the works of the enigmatic and anonymous artist known as JR, who called for more global participatory art projects following his exhibitions, including those in Israel and Palestine, where he posted portraits of Israelis and Palestinians face to face in prominent city locations.
The early beginnings of Inside Out can be seen in two feature documentaries. The first shares the same name with the project’s title, which follows JR across the globe implementing the large scale works. While the second, titled Places Faces, joins JR and the late visionary director, Agnes Varda, on a journey through southern France in a truck doubling as a photo booth, which prints the works on-site.
In total, around 260,000 people have participated across 129 countries, and PHOTO 2021’s group action will be the largest scale project in Australia.
Check out more happenings for PHOTO 2021 in Melbourne here.
Image credit: supplied