"Outposts," Perrotin, 2025

Outposts, the inaugural exhibition of Perrotin’s new gallery featured two ongoing series by JR: Deplacé.e.s (begun in 2022) and Les Enfants d’Ouranos. In fifteen works, JR explored stories of children displaced between borders. Each piece featured a child who embodies hope for the future.

Debuted in Turin in 2023 and brought to New York later that year, Deplacé.e.s displays aerial views of 45-meter-long banner images of refugee children blissfully running, visible from the sky. Each piece in this series reveals the tarp from above, carried in procession by their community. 

JR has now realised Déplacé.e.s processions in crisis zones and refugee camps in Ukraine, Rwanda, Mauritania, Colombia, and Greece. Prior to the opening of JR - Déplacé.e.s at Gallerie d’Italia, the children’s tarps assembled for the first time in Piazza San Carlo, carried by hundreds of people, as if playing together in the same place. Déplacé.e.s Procession #4 capturing this activation was on view for the first time in London.

Les Enfants d’Ouranos explores a childhood in crisis through a different lens. Using a new photographic and technical process, JR transfers negatives of photographs taken during the participatory processions onto reclaimed wood, contrasting the figures with black ink. Now glowing silhouettes, there is an element of hope introduced into the children’s stories. 

Alongside the series, the exhibition showcased two video screenings which documented the making of various Deplacé.e.s activations. On view until May 3rd, 2025, Outposts marked JR’s return to London, where he held his first-ever gallery show in 2008. 

Learn more about Outposts at Perrotin.