Pizandawatc / The One Who Listens

Pizandawatc / The One Who Listens brings together a selection of works by Anishinaabe/French artist Caroline Monnet.

Pizandawatc, “the one who listens” in Anishinaabemowin, refers to the traditional name of the artist’s maternal family, before Oblate missionaries imposed new surnames on Indigenous Peoples. The title also honours her great-grandmother, Mani Pizandawatc, who was the first in her family to experience the fragmentation of the land into reserves.

The works presented in the exhibition extend Monnet’s reflection on time, oral histories, knowledge sharing, and the notion of territory understood as a vessel of memory. The layered wooden sculptures reflect her desire to preserve language in a durable material form, while the bronze pieces echo the silhouettes of wood fragments shaped by the elements. The embroidered textile works, often created from industrial insulation materials, incorporate phrases that evoke the connective power of nature as well as the resilience of Indigenous cultural expressions.

This exhibition is organized by the Art Museum at the University of Toronto.

Touring support for the exhibition is provided by the Canada Council for the Arts.