Mural artists converge on Montreal for fest
Leonard Cohen helped put the Mural Festival on the map.
Montreal artist Kevin Ledo’s nine-storey mural of the worldrenowned Montreal singer-songwriter was painted on the side of the Cooper Building on St-Laurent Blvd. during last year’s edition, and it generated media and social media buzz all around the world.
“I think it had a big impact,” said Pierre-Alain Benoit, general manager of the Mural Festival, in a phone interview Tuesday.
“It was important for us to do an homage to Mr. Cohen a couple of months after his death, especially because of the location and the neighbourhood we’re living in. We’re in the community where Mr. Cohen was living when he was in Montreal. I think it had not only a big impact on the local community but it had a big impact for the notoriety of the festival. Last year, there was a lot of coverage around that internationally, too. That was the marquee event of the festival last year.”
This year’s edition of Mural Festival kicks off Thursday and runs through until June 17, with most of the action located on and around St-Laurent between Sherbrooke St. and Mont-Royal Ave.
The Main is closed to traffic for its street fair for the entire duration of the festival. Mural artists from around the world will be arriving in Montreal to create works of art during the fest, alongside Montreal mural artists.
Some of the international artists participating include Smithe, Saner and Poni from Mexico, and Tristan Eaton, Michael Reeder, Drew Merritt and Cryptik from the United States. Canadian artists creating murals during the event include Sandra Chevrier, WhatIsAdam, STARE, Cyrielle Tremblay, Waxhead, Le Monstr, LSNR, Axe, and Jeremy Shantz.
Kate Raudenbush, a multi-disciplinary artist from New York, will be creating a luminous sculptural installation at the Parc du Portugal.
Last year’s fest kicked off with a free concert featuring hip-hop star Post Malone and the festival
organizers have once again snared some major hip-hop artists for the launch party, with Playboi Carti and Pusha T headlining a free show on the street Thursday that also includes Da-P, Naya Ali and Skinny B2B Kazz.
“There’s been a link in urban culture for a long time now between the graffiti tradition and the hiphop tradition,” said Benoit. “So there’s a strong link between the two. For us, we’ve had musical programming since the first year. In the first year, we had a little tent in the middle of the parking lot with Kaytranada, who was not that well known then. There was like maybe 300 people, a little tent and a DJ. We wanted it to grow because we want people to enjoy the live creation of the murals, but there is only so much time that you can be in front of a mural and we want people to be at the festival for more time than that so we have to provide stronger programming so they’ll have other reasons to stay. So the musical programming grew.”
There will be another free concert Saturday night sponsored by the label Fool’s Gold Records, a label co-founded by Montreal DJ A-Trak, and the show features 88 Glam, Just Blaze, Smooky MarGielaa, High Klassified, Nana Zen, Rue De Bois and Maddielonglegz. The final live music event is Saturday June 16, a show done in partnership with ÎleSoniq featuring Mat Zo, Dabin, Said the Sky and Robotaki.
Los Angeles duo Cyrcle have created an art installation in the underground parking lot of Lune Rouge headquarters, located at the Maison Alcan Complex. The parking lot will be empty and open to the public from noon to 8 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.