A new mural blooms at MAC

From September 26, 2024, to January 26, 2025, stop by the new mural: Wàbigon, meaning “a flower is blooming” in Anishinaabemowin, this work honours the profound impact of Abenaki filmmaker and storyteller Alanis Obomsawin, the subject of the exhibition in the MAC’s main space.

The Anishinaabe and French artist created a monumental photographic group portrait featuring eight Indigenous women and a child posing in an enchanted forest. The image’s harmonious rhythms, colours, and natural forms echo the visual language of the nineteenth and twentieth-century Art Nouveau movement.

About the exhibition

For Monnet, Obomsawin embodies spring – the peak flowering season – symbolizing her profound influence on subsequent generations of Indigenous women.

This is the sixth work in a series that Monnet began in 2016 in which she critically revisits major historical and art movements through an Indigenous lens. In these photographic and video works, she invites women who are leaders in their fields to reclaim spaces that had previously been forbidden to their ancestors.

In Wàbigon, as in her previous portraits, the models look confidently, defiantly, and directly into the camera. Monnet states, “They are the leaders of tomorrow: strong, Indigenous, and proud of it. Together, they form an army of possibilities and honour all those who came before them.” An important aspect of Monnet’s portraits is her focus on francophone Indigenous women living in Québec. These women are profoundly marginalized, face systemic violence, and lack the robust Indigenous networks that support their anglophone counterparts across Canada and globally.

On the mural, you will see (from left to right) Acho Dene Koe chef and artist Swaneige Bertrand with her young daughter; the artist’s sister, Anishinaabe-French interdisciplinary performance artist Émilie Monnet; Caroline Monnet herself; Guinean-Wendat dancer and choreographer Aïcha Bastien N’Diaye; Eeyou (Cree) writer and artist Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau; Atikamekw visual artist Catherine Boivin; Inuk singer-songwriter Elisapie Isaac; and Innu soprano opera singer Elisabeth St-Gelais.