A story
Creating Together, Keeping the Bond
In 2018, Nathalie Hébert painted murals inside Diversico's offices while her mother Laurette, who lives with Alzheimer's disease, took part in the project.
Draft content — story to be reviewed and completed by Nathalie, who alone can say what this experience left with her.
1 · The starting point
Two claims, neither to be given up
Nathalie Hébert is a painter. She is also Laurette's daughter — Laurette was 88 and living with Alzheimer's disease. In 2018, those two claims pulled at her time and her attention: follow her creative inspirations, or stay close to her mother. She felt unable to give either one up.
2 · What was proposed
Paint the walls, with her mother involved
At Diversico Finances Humaines, work rests on no boss and no hierarchy. Members of the team proposed — and unanimously backed — an unusual project: letting Nathalie paint murals on the interior walls of certain offices at head office, with her mother involved. The aim was to offer her a new kind of form for what she felt, and to add moments of happiness to Laurette's everyday life.
3 · What the film shows
A complicity, and a place to take back
Alzheimer's disease isolates people and ends by making them doubt their ability to carry out the most everyday tasks. The short film made as the murals were painted, shown in time-lapse, reveals something else: the complicity between the artist and her mother, and the sense of worth Laurette found in the supporting role she took on.
The project is told as a human experience. It does not claim to prove that art heals.
Still to be written
Nathalie's own words
This story is written from the article Diversico published on 11 February 2018. It contains no words from Nathalie: she alone can say what she felt painting those walls, and what she keeps of the moments spent with her mother.
Draft content — to be completed with the memory Nathalie chooses to tell.
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