Caroline Monnet: This Old House is All We Have
June 19 — September 6, 2026
This Old House is All We Have presents a monumental photographic group portrait of eight Indigenous women and a child gathered within an enchanted forest. Composed with a striking sense of harmony, the image unfolds through rhythmic patterns, saturated colours, and organic forms that subtly echo the visual language of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Art Nouveau. Nature is not merely a backdrop but an active presence—at once protective, symbolic, and charged with history.
Complementing the photograph, a series of sculptural works expands the exhibition into a spatial experience where nature takes center stage while remaining in tension with industrial materials. This dialogue between the organic and the manufactured reflects the contradictions at the heart of modern progress: beauty entwined with extraction, growth inseparable from disruption. The sculptures operate as both extensions of the forest and intrusions upon it, underscoring the fragility of ecological balance.
Through this interplay of image and object, Monnet foregrounds the deep entanglement of economy, development, and the natural environment. The exhibition serves as a reminder that economic prosperity and urban expansion have historically been built upon the exploitation of land and the Indigenous peoples who have lived in relationship with it for generations. This Old House is All We Have asserts the forest as a site of resistance, memory, and continuity-an inherited home whose survival remains inseparable from Indigenous sovereignty and care for the land.
About Caroline Monnet
Caroline Monnet is a multidisciplinary artist of Anishinaabe and French ancestry, originally from the Outaouais region, who lives and works in Mooniyang/Montreal. With a deep interest in communicating Indigenous identity through complex cultural narratives, her artistic and cinematographic work grapples with colonialism’s impact, updating outdated systems with anishinaabeg methodologies.
Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions, notably at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Canada), Kunsthalle Schirn (Frankfurt, Germany), Arsenal art contemporain (New York, USA), Centre International d'Art et du paysage de l'île de Vassivière (France) and the University of Toronto Art Museum (Canada). The artist has also exhibited at the Whitney Biennial (New York, USA), the Toronto Art Biennial (Canada), Musée d'art contemporain (Montréal, Canada), Baltimore Museum of Art (USA), Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, USA) and National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, Canada), among others.
Her cinematographic work has been screened at numerous festivals around the world, including the Toronto International Film Festival (Canada), Sundance Film Festival (Utah, USA), Berlinale (Berlin, Germany), Gothenburg International Film Festival (Sweden) and Rotterdam International Film Festival (Netherlands). Her work has also been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Canada, United States and Europe, notably at the Whitney Biennial (New York, USA).
With bachelor's degrees in sociology and communications from the University of Ottawa and the University of Granada (Spain), Monnet received the Prix Pierre-Ayot and was a finalist for the Sobey Arts Award in 2020. Monnet was also selected for the Cinéfondation residency in Paris for the Cannes Film Festival, received the Merata Mita Fellowship from the Sundance Institute and was named Compagne des arts et des lettres du Québec in 2023. Her work is included in numerous collections in North America and at the Maison de l'UNESCO in Paris.
Caroline Monnet is represented by Blouin Division in Montreal and Toronto.
Image: Caroline Monnet, This Old House Is All We Have. 2025, Embroidery on sill gasket. 42 x 42 in., detail.
