The prismatic video, sound, and print installation From My Home to Yours transforms MAM’s Rand Gallery into an immersive, resonant space to pause and reflect on home, long-distance connection, and the places in between. As longtime friends and collaborators, Montreal-based filmmaker Caroline Monnet (Anishinaabe/French) and Brooklyn-based violinist Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) exchanged images and compositions across miles. The resulting sensory collage layers abstracted natural forms and Super-8 movies from Monnet’s mother’s community of Kitigan Zibi, Quebec, with Ortman’s local outdoor and indoor field recordings and experimental violin. As the installation ebbs between harmony and tension, stillness and fire, it disrupts distance between people and places with an intimacy that can be heard, seen, and felt.
From My Home to Yours premiered at Montreal’s Momenta Biennale de L’Image in 2021 (lead curator: Stefanie Hessler). With its United States debut at Montclair Art Museum, this installation brings the artists not just metaphorically but physically together in Ortman’s locale, bonded across borders.
As part of MAM’s accessibility initiative, the installation includes an audio description created in collaboration with Montclair State University for visitors with vision impairment, as well as a range of seating. Access the audio description here.
The installation is accompanied by an Indigenous performance series in and around the MAM galleries through the end of 2022, inspired by the themes and lands of the work.
Upcoming:
Caroline Monnet (Anishinaabe/French) is a multidisciplinary artist from Outaouais, Quebec whose filmic and sculptural works explore Indigenous identity and grapple with colonialism’s impact. Monnet’s films integrate experimental and documentary techniques, creating concise poetic and politicized portraits of land and people. Her work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions and collections, including a recent solo exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and work in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, the 2019 Toronto Biennial, the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, and the National Gallery of Canada, as well the Sundance, Palm Springs, Göteborg, and Toronto film festivals. In 2016, she was selected for the Cannes Festival Cinefondation residency in Paris. In 2020, she won Canada’s prestigious Sobey Art Award. Her first feature film, Bootlegger, was released to acclaim in 2021.
Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) is a soloist musician, composer, and vibrant collaborator who creates across multiple platforms, including recorded albums, live performances, and filmic and artistic soundtracks. An inquisitive and exquisite violinist, Ortman is versed in Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and amplified violin, often sings through a megaphone, and produces capacious field recordings. She has performed at The Museum of Modern Art, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, The New Museum, the Toronto Biennial, the Centre Pompidou, and countless other venues across the United States, Canada, and Europe. Ortman is the recipient of the Ortman is the recipient of the 2022 Forge Projects Fellowship; 2022 United States Artists Fellowship; 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists; 2020 Jerome@Camargo Residency in Cassis, France; and numerous other grants and residencies. She was also a participating artist in the 2019 Whitney Museum Biennial. Ortman lives in Brooklyn, New York. She has signed her notes to Caroline Monnet “From my home to yours,” inspiring the title of this installation.
Top—Caroline Monnet, Magnitude 02 (2021), vinyl print.
Center, bottom—Frank Schramm/Montclair Art Museum
From My Home to Yours: Caroline Monnet and Laura Ortman is organized by Curator of Native American Art Laura J. Allen in collaboration with the artists. Brent Michael Davids: Home in Lenapehoking and Generations | Home are curated by Betsy Theobald Richards (Cherokee Nation).
From My Home to Yours: Caroline Monnet and Laura Ortman is made possible with generous support from the Lyn and Glenn Reiter Endowed Special Exhibition Fund, Patti and Jimmy Elliott, Tracy Higgins and James Leitner, and Margo and Frank Walter.
All MAM programs are made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, Carol and Terry Wall/The Vance Wall Foundation, Partners for Health Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and Museum members.
