WORKSITE, a solo exhibition by Caroline Monnet, is on view at Arsenal Contemporary Art New York through October 21. Curated by Greg A. Hill, former Audain Senior Curator of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada, this is the Montreal-based artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States.
Over the past decade, Monnet has developed a multifaceted and expansive practice that combines art, film, architecture and furniture design. She employs forms that are deeply rooted in her rich Anishinaabe and French heritage to articulate hybrid expressions of an Indigenous worldview and its methodologies. Her work offers a fresh and unique perspective on the broader heritage of material culture.
The works featured in this exhibition were predominantly created over the last year and center around Monnet’s ongoing exploration of modern home construction materials. Through family house renovation projects experienced in childhood, Monnet developed a fascination for the transformative process of construction. This familiarity bred an affinity for building materials that only grew over time—the unfinished walls, fiberglass insulation, tar paper, and even the presence of spiders. The familiarity with and fondness for these materials catalyzed a profound deconstructive exploration of the realm of domestic construction.
Seen in aggregate, Monnet’s practice evinces a compulsion to be continuously making, continuously building, manifested as a lively aesthetic practice and a strong work ethic. She sustains, moreover, an unwavering commitment to her craft as a way of being that transcends mere productivity. Hill likens Monnet’s spirit to that of the diligent beaver. As Hill reminds us, “for the beaver it is also a matter of survival, if it doesn’t always gnaw, its incisors will grow in an arc that will eventually pierce its throat.”
Monnet’s work also articulates a critique of the construction industry, and its detrimental environmental impact, by leveraging the physical qualities of materials and imbuing them with new meanings. For example, she uses gypsum board, or drywall, an omnipresent material in house building. If exposed to high humidity over extended periods, however, it can be host to dangerous mold. The artist uses this board as a substrate in some of her work, creating intricate symmetrical patterns by growing black mold in a highly controlled manner. The resulting juxtaposition toys sardonically with an otherwise insidious substance that is often present in the subpar housing of too many Indigenous communities.
With these recent works, Monnet draws from the modern built environment, as well as from her blended heritage, to invest pedestrian construction materials with new meanings, and to create artworks with the ability to tell their own stories.
Arsenal Contemporary Art New York | 21 Cortlandt Alley
On View Through October 21, 2023
