Osteria Francescana has no view of the sea or the mountains.
You can see neither a bell tower nor a town square.
Our horizon is shaped by imagination.
NEVER STOP PLANTING is a landscape of ideas.
Every month: art, stories, inspirations.
ART IS WITNESS
JR’s work moves between poetry and protest, turning public space into a site of encounter. He enlarges ordinary lives until they can no longer be ignored, revealing the humanity already present in places and people.
JR makes visible the invisible.
Inside Out.
Outside In.
Across Boundaries.
Beneath and Beyond.
Our first encounter with JR was in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, when he installed larger than life size portraits of culinary students from the favelas on the walls of Refettorio Gastromotiva. The artworks were part of his Inside Out project, a traveling platform that empowers communities around the world to spark global change locally.
Our second collaboration brought the Outside In. For the opening of Refettorio Paris, which JR co-founded in 2018, the artist created an installation of plexiglass clouds suspended from the arched ceiling—a reminder that beauty is a universal language and a form of care.
In 2023, for Refettorio Harlem, JR printed Giant Picnic, an enormous photograph depicting the U.S.–Mexico border, inviting everyone gathered at the Refettorio tables to break down walls and live together Across Boundaries through food, culture, and community.
More recently, in May 2026, on the occasion of the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, JR created Il Gesto, a reinterpretation of The Wedding at Cana featuring 174 members of the Refettorio Paris community woven into a tapestry by Fondazione Bonotto, on view at Palazzo Ca’ until November 24, 2026.
Credits: Refettorio Paris: Jr / Refettorio Harlem / Refettorio Rio: Angelo Dal Bo
JR consistently invites us to look Beneath and Beyond.
“When the classical world has been exhausted, when the farmers and artisans are gone, when fireflies, bees, and butterflies disappear, when industry breaks our natural cycles—then our story ends.”
The words of Pier Paolo Pasolini from La Rabbia echo through Omelia Contadina (2019), a film by JR and Alice Rohrwacher. In the contemporary homily, villagers process through the Umbrian-Lazio countryside carrying monumental portraits of local farmers, which are then buried in their own fields: a gesture of mourning, homage, and resistance.
This story continues at Casa Maria Luigia, where JR’s stained-glass portraits of the two farmers face one another in a chapel-like space above the Playground.
Credits: Ph Paolo Terzi
Art is Witness.
Art is a way to uphold the values that guide our work.
Beneath and beyond these windows, JR’s artworks invite us to consider art beyond museums and food beyond the kitchen, as acts of preservation, visibility, and dialogue.
“Together we must protect the farmers and the artisans who transmit emotions through flavors soaked in history and tradition.
Without these flavors, we cannot tell our story.
Without these flavors, we have no story to tell.”
Massimo Bottura
NEVER STOP PLANTING
Credits: Ph Paolo Terzi
