Do you ever wonder why you don’t go into Boston enough? Tufts students often complain that they do not explore the amazing city as often as they want to, even though Boston is only 15 minutes away. This May, French visual artist and filmmaker, Julien de Casabianca, will be coming to Boston and is giving the Boston community the opportunity to take part in his first American project.
What exactly is this project?
Now, museums, schools, and cities invite him to do it with them; in fact, 80 people on 5 continents make their own exhibitions on walls of buildings. So far, 18 cities have constructed similar anonymous characters found in master paintings. They have pasted them up in public spaces in London, Barcelona, Chicago, Rome, Paris, Lyon, Moscow, Medellin, Hong-Kong, and many others. Casabianca stated that “the global participation was completely unplanned and unexpected but he’s embraced the idea wholeheartedly.”
Why did it start?
The original intent behind the Outings Project in Paris, its birthplace, was to bring “anonymous” portraits of people from great museums onto the streets, which would then become the canvas for the work. Julien de Casabianca saw it as a new way to appreciate the urban spaces around us, specifically two neglected areas. When de Casabianca started in Paris, he worked in the outer arrondissements, which were slightly more economically disadvantaged, and the spaces he pasted his figures in were just as neglected as the pieces hanging in the museums were. For example, he would never paste the Mona Lisa on a wall. He only does “unimportant” or less important people that visitors to a museum would probably walk by without taking a glance at.
How is this going to work in Boston?
The process involves going to a museum—like the MFA—and taking a picture on an older camera phone. The picture is then printed as a large-scale copy and is posted onto walls around Boston and surrounding areas and neighborhoods using wheat paste.
How many will there be?
The project is planning to have 6 huge portraits, 12 medium ones, and 10 small ones.
Where will they be?
Unfortunately, we don’t know for sure what buildings they’re doing, and neither do they. However, those helping with the project are in talk with some places. So, one of the main focuses of the social media presence is to post on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. potential locations using the hashtag #whereshouldweout and tagging the landlords and/or locations. If you have any great ideas of places, tag them on social media!
How do I get involved?
To get involved in this awesome project, you can go on their website and sign up to be on the mailing list. Also, Tufts has its own campus correspondent, Mary Travers, who is more than happy to help get Tufts students involved. She can be contacted either on Facebook or via email. Getting involved means helping wheat paste the portraits throughout Boston in early May or posting things to some social media sites about the project. The more help and interest there is, the more intriguing the pieces of art will be, and the cooler their locations will be!
Be sure to look at the Outings Project Boston’s Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter pages (@outingsboston), and check out these pieces of art in other cities!
Sources: