Design
Enormous Athletes Are Towering Over Rio
The artist JR is installing gargantuan portraits of divers and high-jumpers leaping around the city.
With the Summer Olympics’ opening ceremony just days away, athletes are starting to arrive in Rio de Janeiro to get into game mode. But some decidedly more gargantuan hurdlers and divers have already settled in.
The French artist JR is installing some site-specific sculptures around Rio, suspended as if in mid-air. The enormous figures are made of wheatpasted fabric pulled over scaffolding, which leaves their complex armature visible.