Echo — The Tables Have Turned
Drawings, Paintings, Installation, Social Art
Click this link for an overview of existing Echo miniature paintings.
During the residency at the Cité internationale des arts, I will expand Echo — The Tables Have Turned, a participatory drawing and painting project rooted in shared attention and collective making. Working with diverse communities, the project builds a living archive of drawings, later translated into paintings on recycled materials. The residency enables new collaborations, deepens the project’s conceptual foundations, and adds a Paris-specific chapter to this evolving, translocal practice.
An Archive of Imagination — Echo is a process-based participatory art project that unfolds through the act of drawing. The project takes place in public and community spaces such as schools, hospitals, academies, community centers, care homes — spaces where people of all ages and backgrounds are invited to observe, remember, or imagine. What emerges are delicate drawings on A4 sheets: field notes of figures and places, atmospheres and gestures. These drawings are tentative rather than documentary, tracing not only what is seen, but also what is felt, remembered, or dreamed.
The collection grows into a living archive of collective attention. Each drawing is a trace, a suspended moment. At the same time, it is an invitation — to look again, to reinterpret, to let the image resonate in unexpected ways.
Painting as Shared Practice — From this archive, small paintings emerge. Created on recycled materials such as cardboard from consumer goods and scrap wood, each painting is prepared with layers of grey gesso and painted in tempera with a restricted palette. These paintings are not copies of the drawings, but translations — interpretations developed within a collective studio context. The process is standardized and open, allowing many hands to contribute.
Rather than diminishing the value of drawing, this approach foregrounds its generative potential within a collective process.
Click this link for an overview of existing Echo miniature paintings.
Jan Verbruggen 