Echoes of a Near Future

Renaissance, 2018
On view March 15 – July 14, 2024 

Crise d’Octobre, 2020
On view July 19 – November 18, 2024

Echoes of a Near Future, 2022
On view November 22, 2024 – March 10, 2025

This series of photographs by Caroline Monnet features Indigenous women creatives whom Monnet has known for years, including celebrated documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin, Québécois actress Dominique Pétin, costume designer and chef Swaneige Bertrand, visual artist Catherine Boivin, as well as the artist herself, and her sister. By presenting them in her work, dressed in elaborate, powerful attire, she celebrates the self-determination and strength of the Indigenous women she portrays. Monnet created the clothes in the photographs herself, considering the garments to be a type of conceptual time vessel carrying her sitters as they travel from the Renaissance in Renaissance, to the October Crisis of 1970 in Crise d’Octobre, to a yet unknown future in Echoes of a Near Future. 

Both artist and sitter, Monnet presents herself and the other Indigenous women in the photographs looking directly at the camera – and therefore the viewer – with bold, powerful gazes, while set against a stark background as if in a fashion shoot. The works in this series are in glaring contrast to the way colonial archival images of Indigenous women have presented them as “subjects,” engaged in various domestic tasks, disconnected from and subjugated by the camera. By presenting this group of commanding images in the public sphere as a billboard and on a grand scale, Monnet invites passersby to pause and consider why these women demand to be seen and the stories they individually and collectively hold.

The GreyChurch Billboard is generously supported by Jane Irwin and Ross Hill.