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# A Project by JR Sets Sail, Literally
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/jr-karakoram-transat-jacques-vabre/
- Published: 2017-08-08T19:10:07.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:26:49.000Z
- Description: A work by the street artist and photographer will serve as the sail of a 60-foot yacht when it races from France to Brazil in November.
- Author: Benjamin Sutton
- Tags: News, boats, Jr., #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:30(2016, 2017, part 3)

![The Vivo à Beira boat, with JR's work on its sail, on July 24 (photo courtesy JR)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/08/jr-artwork-boat.jpg)

The Vivo à Beira boat, with JR’s work on its sail, on July 24 (photo courtesy JR)

A work by the street artist and photographer [JR](https://hyperallergic.com/jrs-photoshop-trompe-loeil-at-the-louvre/) will sail across the Atlantic Ocean this fall. The work, a black-and-white closeup of a woman’s eye from his 2008 series [*Women Are Heroes*](http://www.jr-art.net/projects/women-are-heroes-brazil?ref=hyperallergic.com), will serve as the sail of the Karakoram, a 60-foot yacht that will be manned by skipper [Yoann Richomme](http://www.yoannrichomme.fr/?ref=hyperallergic.com) and financier Pierre Lacaze as they navigate from France to Brazil in the [Transat Jacques Vabre](http://www.transatjacquesvabre.org/?ref=hyperallergic.com), a biennial boat race along the old trans-Atlantic coffee trading route (Jacques Vabre is a French coffee company). The race, which begins in early November, typically takes 10 to 15 days to complete.

Lacaze, the New York-based commodities trader who is sponsoring the boat, opted for an artwork on his ship’s sail rather than the corporate backers whose logos are typically featured. The ship’s journey, dubbed [*Vivo à Beira*](http://vivoabeira.org/?ref=hyperallergic.com) (or “living on the edge,” after a line from a poem by the Brazilian author [Clarice Lispector](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice%5FLispector?ref=hyperallergic.com)), is a fundraising initiative for the [BrazilFoundation](https://brazilfoundation.org/?ref=hyperallergic.com), a nonprofit that supports humanitarian work in Brazil. Given that JR’s *Women Are Heroes* project focused on women living in the Moro de Providencia favela of Rio de Janeiro — and that the artist’s own cultural community center, [Casa Amarela](https://www.designboom.com/art/jr-casa-amarela-moon-morro-da-providencia-favela-rio-olympics-08-09-2016/?ref=hyperallergic.com), continues to do work there — choosing an image from that series made a great deal of sense, a spokesperson for the artist told Hyperallergic.

“In my project *Women Are Heroes* I had made the promise to the women I met that I would make their stories travel — this is the eye from a woman who participated in the project,” the artist wrote [on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/BXLMoB9jOvw/?ref=hyperallergic.com). “Thank you to Pierre Lacaze and Yoann Richomme for inviting me to be part of this adventure and for choosing art instead of \[corporate\] branding.”

This is not the first time a boat emblazoned with a work by the French artist has done humanitarian work on the high seas. In 2014, a supertanker transporting shipping containers decorated with one of JR’s images [rescued 213 refugees](https://hyperallergic.com/170197/boat-bearing-jr-artwork-rescues-drifting-migrants/) who’d been drifting in the Mediterranean sea.