Globe for peace

The Project

To celebrate International Day of Peace on September 21, 2019, Ivanhoé Cambridge‘s Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth and Fairmont The Château Frontenac hosted artist residencies within their institutions.

MASSIVart‘s mandate was to select two artists, then coordinate and produce their residencies in Fairmont hotels. In Montreal, the artist Pony was chosen and in Quebec City, Estée Preda was given the opportunity. Both have created artworks on the theme of peace.

The two works were unveiled simultaneously and exhibited in the lobby of each hotel on the International Day of Peace. The artworks are now apart of the hotel’s permanent collections.

In Montreal, this initiative marks the 50th-anniversary celebrations of the Bed-in for Peace, during which John Lennon and Yoko Ono and their guests peacefully protested the Vietnam War and composed the international peace anthem ‘Give Peace a Chance’. Pony stayed in the iconic suite, drawing inspiration through the images of the 1969 Bed-in, the video and audio archives as well as the couple’s messages for peace on display there. These themes are ones that Pony as a painter and illustrator identified with strongly and used to create this work in her unique and modern style.

In Quebec City, Estée Preda completed her residency in the Winston Churchill suite of the Fairmont The Château Frontenac , another mythical place related to peace, as host of the 1943 Quebec Conference. This event brought together Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Mackenzie King to establish strategies to end the Second World War. The artist was able to find inspiration to support his positioning for peace.