1+1+1=1 (2021)
Permanent Public Artwork
1200, boulevard René-Lévesque Est
Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal
Montreal, Canada
Installed in downtown Montreal in front of the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal (CHUM), 1+1+1=1, tells the story of four health care institutions in the city from 1642 to the present.
Stretching over 150 feet, and almost 400 years, each of the fifteen sculptures that make up the piece is composed of repeated geometric units that constitute a numbering system to represent a moment in the life of these hospitals - Hôtel-Dieu, Hôpital Notre-Dame and Hôpital Saint-Luc - that merged to form the CHUM. This process of making data concrete - where numbers dictate the form of a sculpture - reflects the prevalence of statistics, numbering, and counting as ways of knowing today.
Touching on events and subjects as disparate as the flow of wounded soldiers returning to Montreal from the war in Ohio in 1755, the quantity of beds dedicated to "women's diseases" in the late 19th century, the number of cows grazing in the hospital’s garden in the 1930s, or the amount of laundry washed every ten minutes in the 1980s, the work eschews traditional narrative means and avoids singling out individuals to alter what we might expect from an historical account.
1+1+1=1 underscores transformations in medical practices and technologies over time, presents commonplace and humorous details, in addition to giving visibility to acts of care and love, such as the number of visitors who spent the night with a patient in February 2020. In this way, the piece touches upon the role hospitals play their communities beyond what is traditionally seen as health care, and raises issues around corporality, vulnerability, and labour.
1+1+1=1, 2021, installation: 15 sculptures, formed and cast aluminum, powder-coated, 46 m x 1.14 m x 6.2 m, Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM), Montreal. Credits : Wusteken (production); Magicolor (paint); Infravert (installation).
