Graphic / Graphique

2020

Installed at CEGEP du Vieux Montréal (Montréal, QC)
Size: 78” x 78” (2m x 2m)
Produced by MU Montreal

This mural was sponsored by Récherche Québec, as part of their CovidArt initiative. For this program, they asked artists to collaborate with a scientist or researcher around the theme of Covid-19, creating a piece of public or street art that responded to the current pandemic.

A grid of 50 square by 50 squares, this patchwork represents the 33 boroughs of Montreal during the first 50 days of the Covid-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020. Each column represents a day, beginning on April 1st. Using the statistics from Santé Montréal, artist Shelley Miller worked in collaboration with epidemiologist Joanna Merckx to to round up the proportion of cases per borough to 2% blocks, calculated from rolling averages of cases per 1000 inhabitants. Using this method, the final artwork illustrates how each borough compares to each other, not by absolute number of total cases, but rather by taking into account population density. Although overall numbers increased most everywhere on the island over this time span, the fluctuations in the artwork show how the relative burden of disease the boroughs had to carry remained consistent after only 35 days.

The boroughs are presented alphabetically, beginning from the top (colour chart photo in the album).

Coloured concrete pieces were donated by m3béton in Montreal, but had to be cut into 1.5” square pieces. Ultimately, this work was created like a patchwork quilt, using the material available, and selecting colours based on availability. In this way, it also acts like a memory quilt of this first wave of the pandemic on the Island of Montreal. By representing the first wave of the pandemic in a series of square blocks, it speaks not only to data and statistics, but also to the lockdown, and the collective experience of being confined in our own homes; physically constructed boxes as well as mental ones.

Photo credit: Olivier Bousquet at MU.