Laignee Barron
Oct 10, 2017

Just weeks after trolling President Donald Trump’s reversal of the “Dreamers” program with a 65-foot tall image of a toddler peering over the US-Mexico border wall, the French artist behind the installation is back, eyeing the border once again. This time, the artist has installed Giant Picnic, an enormous table spanning both sides of the wall and adorned with two eyes. The artist, who goes by the name JR, said on Instagram that he painted “the eyes of the dreamer” atop the installation extending across Tecate, Mexico and Tecate in California.

Picnic-goers on both sides of the border came together to break bread at the fully functioning table during the one-day display.

“People eating the same food, sharing the same water, enjoying the same music (half of the band on each side) around the eye of a dreamer... we forgot the wall for a minute,” JR, the artist, said.

JR is known for his large-scale artwork inspired by social themes, which he has installed — often without official permission — all around the world, in places spanning from Sierre Leone, to Japan and Brazil. Though he acknowledged that his picnic artwork was technically forbidden, it was not shut down, and during the Sunday display he even paused for cup of tea with a border patrol officer.

More:
http://time.com/4977283/artist-stages-picnic-on-us-mexico-border/