Name/Title
Water Rises Above (Anìwibi)Entry/Object ID
2025.07.01Description
Caroline Monnet is a multidisciplinary artist of Anishinaabe and French heritage. Her practice spans visual arts and film, exploring themes of Indigenous identity, bicultural experience, and the legacy of colonialism through a striking blend of industrial materials and modernist abstraction.
Her installations, sculptures, and films are known for their poetic tension—merging raw construction materials like tar paper, insulation, and polyethylene with refined geometric forms to evoke both resilience and precarity in Indigenous communities.
Monnet's practice is rooted in material transformation and cultural reclamation. She often uses industrial supplies—Styrofoam, membrane insulation, copper, and plywood—as metaphors for displacement, environmental degradation, and the housing crisis on reserves. These materials are reimagined through traditional Anishinaabe techniques such as embroidery and geometric patterning, asserting Indigenous knowledge systems within contemporary frameworks.
In "Water Rises Above (Anìwibi)," Monnet weaves a visual compositions that reflect Indigenous artistic heritage. Strips of foil roofing underlay and vibrant waterproofing membrane become a bright interwoven textile, challenge traditional artistic norms and prompting audiences to question cultural conventions. These durable elements convey both a sense of permanence and resistance, imbuing the piece with grounded intensity and timely relevance. The title Anìwibi, which translates to “water rising,” becomes a reference to the materials and cultural pressures, and spotlights themes of survival, adaptability, and enduring strength within contemporary society.
Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), the Whitney Biennial (New York), and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. She is a recipient of the 2020 Sobey Art Award, the Pierre-Ayot Award, and the Sundance Institute’s Merata Mita Fellowship.Artwork Details
Medium
Floor and roof underlayment, waterproofing membraneDimensions
Height
68.6 cmWidth
58.4 cm