A first Artist in Residence at Equitas

He started his work at Equitas by reflecting on key issues we work on and how to represent them visually and meaningfully. He did a first drawing about gender equality on a round wood panel. Proud of the effect, he decided that his other artworks would also be in round shapes and that this would be the trademark of his contributions to Equitas. Another style that came back often throughout his pieces for Equitas was his way of using one continuous line that shapes into faces, words and symbols.

His next task was to create signs for an internal learning event, each subject that was going to be discussed was in a particular room: environment and human rights, decolonization, gender equality and more.

In July, Equitas hosted an International Learning event where we welcomed twelve of our international partners from Kenya, Tanzania, Haiti, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Tunisia to talk about the lessons learned and the good practices for advancing gender equality through human rights education. Together with Equitas’ employees, we spent five days talking about ways of improving our actions and Jean Manuel prepared some posters to collect inputs for a collective memory project.

At the end of the week, Equitas held an event with our partners, donors, funders, employees and more at the Centre for Sustainable Development in Montreal. Here, Jean Manuel put in place the highlight of his internship: he prepared and conducted a collective work of art to be hung in the office. With a big round wood panel on a table, acrylic markers and lots of imagination, the canvas was filled with messages, images, names and symbols. The objective was for all participants to have the opportunity to express their involvement in human rights education and opinions in an interactive and participatory way.

For the event, Jean Manuel also prepared 100 little round wood tablets where participants could draw something and keep it as a souvenir or give a message to someone else.

The last part of his internship consisted in painting signs to identify the different rooms in our office. We have three rooms named after important personalities in Equitas’ history: Charlot Jeudy, activist for LQBTQI+ rights, Thérèse Casgrain, feminist activist and co-founder of Equitas and John Humprey, lawyer and co-founder of Equitas. He painted their portraits to hang outside the meeting rooms and to help keep their legacy alive. He also did some artwork for other meeting rooms in our office, called Mont-Royal East and Mont-Royal West, so, now created paintings that represent both sides of the mountain.

To conclude his internship, Jean Manuel held a workshop with Equitas employees where he taught participants to draw symbols of gender inclusion, raised hands as a symbol of social change, and portraits with only one continuous line.