This year, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is using art to express what’s at stake, tell medical humanitarian stories and inspire people to take action.

In October we unveiled our first mural, entitled “Finding Home Again,” in Montreal. Created in partnership with public arts organization MU, artist Dan Buller and Indo-Canadian poet Rupi Kaur, the colourful design features a woman, child and butterflies and is a symbol of our joint solidarity with the over 100 million people forcibly displaced today due to conflict, disasters and climate change.

We returned to this powerful motif in February, re-imagining the mural as a more than three-metre-tall ice sculpture. The art installation was located on the busy corner of Sparks and O’Connor streets in Ottawa as a part of the popular Winter-lude festival.

In Ottawa, individuals were invited to co-create alongside MSF by writing solidarity messages on colourful ribbons hung up to surround the mother and child. By the end of the three-week festival, several thousand ribbons were integrated as part of the sculpture with words of solidarity in multiple languages. This arts-forward advocacy piece sparked an important conversation about the growing number of people who have been forcibly displaced in the world today.