Creatura Dada

Caroline Monnet’s work explores her bicultural life as an artist of Anishinaabe and French descent. Her multidisciplinary practice examines the shifting of her cultural history. Through her work, she considers the impact of colonialism by updating outdated systems with Indigenous Knowledge. In her film Creatura Dada (2016), Monnet orchestrates a powerful gathering of six Indigenous francophone women: Alanis Obomsawin, Nadia Myre, Swaneige Bertrand, Nahka Bertrand, Émilie Monnet, and herself, around a lavish dining table. This gathering is a celebration of their shared Indigeneity, identity, and cultural heritage. It is a moment of recollection and conviviality, a testament to the resilience and strength of Indigenous women.

The film itself refers to the artistic movement Dada, established during the early twentieth century. This avant-garde movement rejected conventional aesthetics and embraced the unconscious, irrational, and inconsistent. Monnet utilizes the strategies inherent in collage, montage, and assemblage in her film, which rejects the traditional flow of narrative storytelling and instead welcomes the unpredictability of the scenes as they unfold. Blurring the boundaries between reality and dreams, Monnet marries Western art history with Indigenous symbols, creating a new, hybrid representation.

Presented in partnership with The Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University.