A Renaissance palace appears to split open, revealing rooms and artworks behind its stone façade. JR’s La Ferita, or The Wound, created that illusion at Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi in 2021. The building was intact; the opening was a monumental photographic collage.
How the illusion worked
JR’s project record describes an installation 28 meters high and 33 meters wide, displayed from March 19 to August 22, 2021. Its composition used a particular viewing position to make flat imagery appear to reveal depth inside the palace.
The imagined interior combined architectural references with artworks and a library. It was not a literal live view through damaged masonry. That freedom to assemble an interior was part of the artwork’s meaning.
Why open a closed building visually?
Created during the COVID-19 period, the work addressed restricted access to cultural places. Museums, libraries, cinemas and theaters had become harder or impossible to enter. The apparent wound made an invitation to look inside also feel like a sign of cultural loss.
Keeping the installation’s dates attached matters. A photograph remains available long after a temporary artwork has left its original setting, and should not be treated as proof that it is still on view.
The imagined interior included references to Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Primavera, alongside the cultural spaces that visitors had been unable to enter. The title’s “wound” could be read both as the apparent tear in the palace and as a response to the disruption of shared cultural life. In the 2021 article, JR described that invitation:
"They say the museums are closed, but it's up to us to open them. Here is Florence, the city of Boticelli, Donatello, Machiavel, and Dante, we opened the Palazzo Strozzi. These last few months, we have been deprived of the possibility to be together… but we still have the freedom to dream, to create, to envision the future. Maybe it's not much, but we have that!"
Palazzo Strozzi director Arturo Galansino explained the connection between the installation and public participation:
"What all these lockdowns have shown us very clearly is that people are hungry for culture. They want to access exhibitions, museums, libraries, theatres, cinemas, to have culture back as a fundamental part of their lives. We want this work to be seen as an invitation to rediscover a direct relationship with art and to explore new forms of sharing and participation—a call to action for art and culture in this difficult moment."
These statements belong to the 2021 installation and pandemic restrictions. The work’s announced end in August was subsequently recorded as August 22,2021; the original hope that it might remain permanently should not be mistaken for an extension.
Look once for the illusion, again for the construction
Notice where the real windows meet the printed scene and how the imaginary edges cross the façade. Once the visual trick becomes visible, the work does not lose its appeal; the craft becomes another part of the experience.
For another playful transformation of architecture, see a bridge painted to resemble LEGO bricks. At a different scale, Kerala’s Jatayu sculpture makes a landscape part of a story.
Vile’s illusion murals offer another way of making a wall seem to open. His lettering uses painted depth and continuations of the surrounding view to turn a solid surface into a visual puzzle.
Credits and further reading: said of the new work.
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