Public unveiling of FRAGILE, a monumental work by Roadsworth, at Montreal’s Eaton Centre

Did you know that 26 million visitors pass through Montreal’s Eaton Center each year? This high volume makes it an ideal venue for art, participatory projects, and high impact messages.

Last week, in the presence of numerous media and onlookers, our colleague Jean-Benoît accompanied Montreal artist Roadsworth for the public unveiling of his work FRAGILE,  a massive temporary installation made from 100% recycled materials displayed over five floors of Montreal’s Eaton Center.

Designed and produced in collaboration with Brian Armstrong, FRAGILE represents an ecosystem composed, among others things, of 20,000 plastic bottles, 500 aluminum cans,  bubble wrap, thousands of hangers, paper cups, and hundreds of square meters of cardboard. All of these recycled materials, collected by the artists over eight months, come from Eaton Center merchants and visitors.

According to Roadsworth, FRAGILE as an artistic statement “is not a re-creation of nature but a facsimile thereof… whose beauty lies not in how successfully it portrays the natural world but the degree to which the attempt to do so falls short…the elements that make up this installation are reassembled into a clumsy semblance of their original forms, a poignant reminder of both the fragility and irrevocable loss of a natural and original state.”

Montreal’s Eaton Center has been transformed into an ecosystem and art venue using the by-products of its daily operations.

For a glimpse of the work, visit

FRAGILE will be at the Eaton Center until October 30, 2011.