What does Bill Clinton have in common with 27-year-old French street artist “JR”? No, not some sex thing: As of today, they’ve both won the TED prize, a $100,000 award for “exceptional individuals.” Want to see JR’s art?
JR works mainly in slums around the world—Brazil, Cambodia, and Kenya, for example—transforming the buildings in poor neighborhoods with huge, blown-up photographs of the residents plastered to the exterior. In some cases, the pictures serve as building material—in Kenya, the vinyl photographs became new, waterproof roofs for the residents’ homes.
JR hasn’t had time to think of a wish yet—he’s currently in Shanghai, working on a project—but told The New York Times that “it would undoubtedly involve his kind of guerrilla art.” The money, too, would be put toward a more ambitious project.
