Naples hosts exhibition and monumental photographic work by artist JR

From May 22, 2025 to October 5, 2026, the Gallerie d’Italia, Intesa Sanpaolo’s museum in Naples, will host Who Are You, Naples?, the first Italian stage of the Chronicles series by French artist JR (Paris, 1983). The project, which has already been realized in cities such as Clichy-Montfermeil, San Francisco, New York, Miami, Kyoto, Dallas, Saint Louis, Washington DC and in fifteen cities in Cuba, lands in Naples with a site-specific installation, made under the patronage of the City Council. The intervention is divided into two spaces: on the one hand, the exhibition inside the museum, and on the other, an urban intervention on the facade of the Cathedral, which becomes the scene of a monumental photographic work.

The work will be unveiled to the public on May 21 at 7 p.m., while the official presentation of the project will take place at noon on the same day at the Gallerie d’Italia headquarters. The facade of the Duomo will be temporarily transformed into a mosaic of faces, a visual restitution of a survey of the city’s cultural identity conducted by JR in September 2024. Between Sept. 23 and 29, the artist worked in seven neighborhoods of Naples - Piazza Sanità, Piazza Dante, Fuorigrotta, Mergellina, San Giovanni a Teduccio, Piazza Cavour and the Borgo di Sant’Antonio - collecting portraits and testimonies of 606 people. The subjects come from different social and cultural backgrounds and represent a plurality of faces of the city. The project, in the artist’s intentions, photographs an identity in motion: the sense is to capture a specific moment in the collective life of the city. Each participant has chosen how to be portrayed and how to tell his or her story, using Italian or Neapolitan. The stated goal is thus not an “objective” or idealized representation, but a choral restitution in which each individual can recognize himself or herself as an equal. The portraits were made with the same light, a technique that allows for the elimination of visual hierarchies and restores equal dignity to the subjects. Voice recordings collected during the production phase can be accessed through jrchronicles.net. In addition to material related to the Neapolitan experience, the exhibition will also feature three previous murals from the Chronicles series: Chroniques de Clichy-Montfermeil(France), Las Crónicas de Cuba (Cuba) and The Gun Chronicles: A Story of America (USA). The goal is to offer a comparative overview of the artist’s working method and the evolution of the project, which spans different territories, cultures and themes, but always through a coherent visual framework.

Participating in the realization of the Naples project were pizza makers, firefighters, policemen, priests, writers, musicians, tourists, students, grandmothers and the mayor of the city, among others, in a synthesis that aims to restore the heterogeneity of the urban and social fabric. The exhibition set up in the halls of the Gallerie d’Italia also provides access to the “behind the scenes” of the work. The exhibition catalog is published by Società Editrice Allemandi.

In any case, JR’s approach is not limited to a visual exploration: the artist uses the image as a pretext to stimulate questions about the present. Who are you, Naples? thus also becomes a broader reflection on what it means to narrate a city today. The work is conceived as an open space, rather than an answer, a question addressed to the citizens themselves. How would they like to be remembered? What is the face they would like to give back of themselves and the city? In this sense, the intervention is proposed as a cultural and social activation device. The connection between JR and Neapolitan culture has earlier roots. The artist’s studio, in New York’s Soho neighborhood, is located a few blocks from Mulberry Street, the epicenter of the Italian community and home of the Feast of San Gennaro. In 2014, JR made Unframed on Ellis Island, where he installed historical images of immigrants-including many Neapolitans-on the walls of the island’s former hospital. The short film Ellis, starring Robert De Niro, began as a tribute to those who left Naples and Italy in search of a new life in the United States. Again, at the heart of the project was the theme of a collective portrait, constructed from individual fragments.

Who Are You, Naples? is part of the Gallerie d’Italia program, which also includes museums in Milan, Turin and Vicenza. The entire project is directed by Michele Coppola, Executive Director Art, Culture and Historical Heritage of Intesa Sanpaolo.

Naples hosts exhibition and monumental photographic work by artist JR

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.