It's the most amazing athletic spectacle in Rio, and the Olympics haven't even started yet
French artist JR is transforming Rio just in time for the Games
They're some of the most awe-inspiring athletic spectacles that you'll find in Rio today, but you won't find them inside an Olympic venue.
Vaulting over an apartment complex, a high jumper smokes the Olympic record by 25 stories or so.
Elsewhere, a diver as big as a bus glides into the bay with 10.0 form.
Both pieces are the latest installations by French artist JR, whose long-running Inside Out Project has reached Rio for the Olympic Games — an idea that's involved more than 300,000 people since he launched it in 2011.
Often using trucks that have been tricked out as photo booths — ones that print larger-than-life portraits — the Inside Out team captures pictures of anyone and everyone who wants to participate, pasting the posters on walls and sidewalks...and in this particular case, even the inside of Maracanã stadium. When athletes enter the storied venue for the Rio 2016 opening ceremony tonight, all the faces of Brazil will be the first thing they see.
According to the artist's website, the IOC invited JR to Rio for this special iteration of the project. The faces being pasted all over the city are meant to include everyone connected to the Games — fans, volunteers, athletes, everyone — to represent the global scale of the Olympic spirit.
As for the massive, athletic installations — called, appropriately enough, "The Giants" — JR has been posting previews of the public artworks to Instagram over the last few days as his crew works on scaffolding high above the city. A third piece is still in progress. (According to his site, a gargantuan photo of French swimmer Léonie Periault will soon surface at Botafogo Bay.)
He's included some information about "The Giants" themselves online as well; the high jumper, for instance, depicts a real-life Olympic hopeful, Mohamed Younes Idriss. As JR writes, Idriss is "a Sudanese athlete who couldn't make it to the Games because of an injury. He still came to Rio and jumps over a building in Flamengo."
"Even though Brazil is going through political and economic turmoil and the necessity of the Games at this moment can spark controversy," he continues, "the Olympic spirit will joyfully be welcomed by the people tonight."
The artist has worked in Rio before, notably in 2008 for a project called Women are Heroes. In a poor, hillside community known for its extreme violence, he took photos of the women who live there — pasting enormous photos of their faces on the walls that look down on the rest of the city.
His Inside Out Project has previously visited the city as well — one of more than 120 locations it's stopped.
Last fall, JR's photo truck rolled through Toronto for Nuit Blanche, where CBC Arts followed the artist to Nathan Phillips Square. There, thousands of Torontonians added their faces to the project, and in the video below, JR tells the story behind it all, explaining why the focus of his work is bringing the world together.