ONTARIO .- The Art Museum at the University of Toronto is pleased to present Pizandawatc / The One Who Listens / Celui qui écoute, featuring works by Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist Caroline Monnet. Her first exhibition in a Toronto public gallery, Pizandawatc comprises a survey of Monnet’s prolific production, centering around a new series of sculptures that reveal the connection between language and land, offering poetic strategies of reclamation and intergenerational transmission.

The title, Pizandawatc, comes from the traditional name of Monnet’s family before surnames were changed in Kitigan Zibi by the Oblates. Meaning "the one who listens," the title honours the artist’s great-grandmother, Mani Pizandawatc, who was the first in her family to have her territory divided into reserves. At the same time, it references a way of being in the world, in relation, in continuity, reflected throughout Monnet’s artistic practice. Born in the Outaouais, of Anishnaabe and French descent, Monnet draws upon her bi-cultural experience to grapple with colonialism’s impact, subverting its oppressive systems with Indigenous worldviews and methodologies.

In Monnet’s new body of work, she continues her considerations of sound as linked to temporality, orality, and knowledge sharing. Driven by an impulse to materialize speech into durable physical form in order to preserve it, Monnet attempts to counter the ephemeral nature of the uttered word and to reclaim the Anishinaabe language by recording its resonance in layered native and industrial wood. Evoking the relationship of idiom to the land inhabited, the works examine the influence of topography on the rhythms and resonances of language and culture.

Presenting a range of recent and older works relating to ideas explored in the new series, Pizandawatc offers a comprehensive view of Monnet’s complex aesthetic vocabulary, material expertise, and cohesive conceptual investigation. Through her sculptures, mixed media works, videos and installations, Monnet underscores the centrality of the land and its resources in Anishinaabe spirituality, history, and resilience, envisioning the territory as a living form of knowledge transfer over generations.

Caroline Monnet (Anishinaabe/French) is a multidisciplinary artist from Outaouais, Québec. She studied Sociology and Communication at the University of Ottawa (Canada) and the University of Granada (Spain) before pursuing a career in visual arts and film. Her work has been featured at the Whitney Biennial (NYC), Toronto Biennal of Art, KØS museum (Copenhagen), Museum of Contemporary Art (Montréal), the National Art Gallery (Ottawa). Solo exhibitions include Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Arsenal Contemporary (NYC) and Centre d’art international de Vassivière (France). Her work is included in numerous collections in North America as well as the permanent UNESCO collection in Paris. Her films have been extensively programmed at international film festivals including TIFF and Sundance. In 2016, she was selected for the Cannes Festival Cinéfondation residency in Paris. Monnet is recipient of the 2020 Pierre-Ayot award and the Merata Mita Fellowship of the Sundance Institute, and she was recently named Compagne des arts et des lettres du Québec. She is based in Montréal and is represented by Blouin-Division Gallery.

Art Museum at the University of Toronto
Pizandawatc: The One Who Listens / Celui qui écoute
Opening Night: Wednesday, January 17, 2024, 6pm–8pm Exhibition is on view until March 23, 2024