Re:Imagine

Re:Imagine-Constructing Peace Interventions, was a participatory arts intervention staged at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) for its 2016 Nuit Blanche festivities. Growing from a graduate course centred on the newly formed partnership between Concordia’s Art Education department and the MMFA, this project was conducted as a collaborative project between seventeen MA and P.h.D. students in Art Education and over fifty public participants. This collaborative artwork, a "Kite for Peace", brought members of the public into the museum's old masters galleries for a private tour of selected paintings, each animated through various dynamic presentations conceived and presented by the students of the course. These presentations were devised in order to link the chosen paintings to wider notions of peace, both within and beyond the museum sphere. Participants were encouraged to engage in discussions around each work in order to share knowledge and learn collaboratively. Afterwards, participants then contributed to a participatory artwork embodying these collective/ collaborative learning experiences, allowing them to actualize their discourse and exchange of thoughts. This "Kite for Peace" was then installed in the MMFA's public hall, and later exhibited "in flight" Concordia's Ev Junction. The Peace Kite was then collaboratively flown on Peace Day 2016. 

Artists and project participants include Ann-Lisa Kissi, Amina Jalabi, BJ McCarville, Christine Suarez, Claudia Laurin, Emanuelle Dufour, Emma Harake, Jacob Le Gallais, Julie Etheridge, Lea Kabiljo, Leigh Cline, Luminita Paun, Melissa Tamporello, Sergio Lugo, Tal-Or Ben-Choreen, and course instructor Kathleen Vaughan.

Photos by Emanuelle Dufour, Emma Harake, and Amina Jalabi 
Video by Amina Jalabi