Caroline Monnet: Man-made Land

Caroline Monnet’s (Algonquin-Anishinaabe and French; b. 1985 in Ottawa, Ontario) site-responsive installation for the Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall accompanies _[An Indigenous Present](https://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/an-indigenous-present/)_, a thematic exhibition spanning 100 years of contemporary Indigenous art. Responding to the ICA’s location at the edge of the harbor, Monnet’s installation is plotted with “blooms” that expand fractal-like, symbolizing Boston’s 400-year history of land reclamation. The land the ICA is built upon is man-made, a constructed environment the artist represents using commercial building materials—like Tyvek, plastic, and foil insulation—that she transfigures through laborious handwork: cutting, piecing, and sewing. The intricately layered materials cohere into geometric circles and lines that Monnet abstracts from Anishinaabeg designs found on regalia, birch bark baskets, and beadwork. _Man-made Land_ is a meditation, as she explains, “on the interconnectedness of all living things…a way to transmit cultural knowledge and values across generations, reinforcing a sense of community and belonging.”