Bringing the Inside Out Project to Haiti

One of the main objectives of this trip is to bring JR's Inside Out Project to Haiti.  Before coming, we chose pictures from our first trip that we felt represented the people and messages of Haiti, and submitted them to the project.  For those who aren't familiar with the project, you should definitely check out this video on the 2011 TED Prize Winner JR and check out the website.  It's really amazing!


But to give you a little background, it's a large-scale participatory art project that challenges people around the world to "reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world."  To get involved in the project all you need to do is take a black and white photographic portrait, upload the image to the project's website, and then paste the poster you receive back for the world to see.   That's exactly what Mike and I did and I can't wait to wheat paste the portraits so they can be seen by the world.

One of the portraits we'll be wheat pasting in Haiti.
Photo by Mike Zuckerman

We have portraits that are going up at GRU, a transitional house for children, a Lakou in the Central Plateau, and even a 30 foot water tower in Cité Soleil!  All of the locations will have photographs of people from the community.  


In addition to the pre-planned installations, we've added another since we arrived.  A friend of ours lives and works in a part of  Cité Soleil called Little Haiti.  It's an incredible community -- which I'll cover in another post, because they deserve their own piece -- that is working on a memorial for the two year anniversary of the earthquake.  The memorial is going to go up on a wall in their neighborhood and I feel honored that they've invited us to participate.  Working with local Haitian street artists, we're going to combine their art with our photographs to create a giant message of hope & inspiration for a brighter future.  Tomorrow we're participating in a community cleanup around the wall to get the area ready for the memorial.  I love how art (even before it's created) is bringing the community together.  Art truly is a powerful tool for social change...