A 200 ft construction hoarding mural designed in collaboration with MU and Le Quartier des Spectacles to mark the site of Montréal’s new public square and skating rink, Palisssade Tranquille, 2021.
who was the proprietor of the Librarie Tranquille, which once stood on this spot, and a revolutionary benefactor for the arts.
This design is mostly about what legacy means, and how it spreads. To me, although monuments and dedications are important gateways into recognizing an individual’s valuable contributions, the function of a legacy is to exist in the thoughts and experiences of the people.
For a catalyst personality like Henri Tranquille, that often means his influence is so ingrained in our culture and behaviour that it unknowingly becomes a part of our own identities. Generations have grown up in the society he helped shape. I wanted to focus on the people today that benefit from the intellectual and cultural freedom Henri Tranquille and his contemporaries cultivated on Clark and St-Catherine, decades ago. I zoomed in on several of the faces, to focus on the idea that Henri Tranquille’s legacy was an intellectual one. It exists in what we now see as a right to imagination and liberal thought in Quebec.
The direct ties to Henri Tranquille and his contemporaries are the graphic and surrealist composition, and of course, the steel letterpress blocks: an homage to his contribution to printed literature.