Critical land.
Indigenous art and identity

Sylvia Cunningham: Welcome to “Critical land”. I’m your host, Sylvia Cunningham. This is the second episode of an English-language podcast from the Schirn Kunsthalle Frank­furt debuting along­side its latest exhi­bi­tion, “Magnetic North: Imag­ining Canada in Painting 1910-1940.” In this podcast series, we’re drawing from some of the themes in “Magnetic North” to go beyond what is displayed on the gallery walls through conver­sa­tions with Indige­nous artists and scholars. The exhi­bi­tion exam­ines modern Cana­dian land­scape painting from a contem­po­rary stand­point. It also features the film, “How a People Live,” from Anishi­naabe film­maker Lisa Jackson and “Mobi­lize” from Algo­nquin-French artist Caro­line Monnet, whom you’ll be hearing from in today’s episode. Monnet’s immer­sive video instal­la­tion, “Transat­lantic,” is also on view in the publicly acces­sible Rotunda at the Schirn. A quick note — we talked about the Group of Seven in the first episode of “Critical land” with the exhi­bi­tion’s curator Martina Wein­hart and Lakota-Scot­tish art professor Carmen Robertson, so if you haven’t listened to those inter­views yet, you can do so here. Now to today’s episode. Caro­line Monnet is a multi­dis­ci­pli­nary artist based in Montreal. She grew up in both Gatineau, Québec and Brit­tany, France. Her mother is Algo­nquin, her father is French, and she works with many different mediums, including film­making, sculp­ture, instal­la­tion and painting.
[Audio from “Mobi­lize”]
What you’re hearing now is sound from Monnet’s short film, “Mobi­lize,” one of her works on view at the Schirn. The film has an incred­ible driving pace, from the music performed by Tanya Tagaq to the actions we see on camera. There’s one man master­fully paddling through the water, others are peeling birch bark to make a canoe. We also see scenes in the bustling city, including Mohawk iron­workers climbing atop steel girders. I asked Caro­line Monnet how this film came to be.

Caroline Monnet: In 2015, the National Film Board of Canada approached me to rework mate­rials from their archives. This was part of their “Souvenir” series, so we were four film­makers across Canada to make a three-minute video with their archives. The only direc­tion they gave us was to portray Indige­nous iden­tity, which I thought was a very abstract thing because for me there are many Indige­nous real­i­ties. I had access to over 800 films, most of them were made from a white, male perspec­tive, approaching Indige­nous people from an anthro­po­log­ical stand­point where the protag­o­nists are always presented as very passive, kind of busy working on their craft and really insisting on remaining at the margins of Cana­dian society. So, there’s kind of a tension between the orig­inal footage that was created during a time of histor­ical chaos and the treat­ment of Indige­nous people and between the remix that I did in “Mobi­lize.” Because I used these visuals, these films to kind of summon the mobi­liza­tion of Indige­nous people, nation­wide. For me Indige­nous iden­tity is some­thing vibrant and dynamic. It’s not some­thing passive that is shown in these films. I wanted audi­ences to feel ener­gized seeing Indige­nous people showing off their skills on screen. That’s why I was partic­u­larly inter­ested in images of people walking or building, canoeing, moving forward. For me this really coun­ters the inertia too often portrayed in Cana­dian media.

Sylvia Cunningham: Even the fact that you were invited to do this within the frame­work of “Indige­nous iden­tity” — which is this term that’s singular, it’s mono­lithic — how did you approach it? Did you approach it from your personal back­ground or how could you convey that it’s impos­sible to boil this down to a mono­lithic view? 

Caroline Monnet: You cannot boil it down to a mono­lithic view because there are multiple real­i­ties of Indige­nous iden­tity, and there’s so much diver­sity within the big Indige­nous commu­nity itself across Canada. I knew I didn’t want to go into the nostalgic realm of choosing black and white footage. That’s why I decided to go with 16mm color footage because to bring that kind of consis­tency from begin­ning to end of the film and where audi­ences would almost feel that I shot it myself. You start looking more at texture and colors and piecing each visual together, almost like a puzzle except you don’t know what the end image will be. You just piece it together and somehow start finding a narra­tive with all that. In some ways the film also repre­sents my own family’s history. I didn’t grow up in my mom’s commu­nity but across gener­a­tions, it evolves on the land. I think there’s a level of priv­i­lege that comes with the migra­tion to the city, accessing jobs and educa­tion, but with that priv­i­lege comes a level of assim­i­la­tion, trauma, and displace­ment. You start building a new narra­tive in these cities. I was really intrigued by that and the kind of notion of labor that is very different in the city, than out on the land and doesn’t require the same skill set and knowl­edge. So, the film was really about that. Overall, “Mobi­lize” is about pointing how Indige­nous people were instru­mental in shaping Cana­dian society, to the extent of building skyscrapers in our city. It was about saying our pres­ence as Indige­nous people can no longer be ignored. 

Sylvia Cunningham: You mentioned you narrowed down the scope to 16mm color footage. How many hours of film was that then that you had access to work with then? 

Caroline Monnet: I had access to 800 films, but you’d start typing keywords, because you can’t watch them all. The keywords were about “building” and “walking” and “Indige­nous people walking,” “Indige­nous people running,” “Indige­nous people building.” I wanted the idea of being in action and not show­case a passive people. We’re not stag­nant in time, we’re very active and we have a set of skills that are actu­ally very cele­brated. We’re part of this vibrant society, and we have our place within it, and I wanted to show that, so you have to work quite instinc­tively with that process, working with archives. I was using Tanya Tagaq’s sound­track, which was instru­mental in bringing that level of energy in the editing as well. I edited on the sound­track and her music has this tradi­tional connec­tion while remaining very contem­po­rary, almost like metal music, which I thought was really inter­esting. Her sound helped to use the archives to speak about the future.

Sylvia Cunningham: So, that came into process rela­tively early? I was going to ask about that. You knew you were going to be using Tanya Tagaq’s music and craft the footage to it, to build and match that track’s driving pace? 

Caroline Monnet: Yes, absolutely. I had access to her album and I chose the most upbeat track on the album because from the very begin­ning it was clear to me that I wanted—because it’s only three minutes—to have this expe­ri­ence, create an expe­ri­ence for audi­ences where they would be almost plugged to the computer and be bombarded by images and then their heart would start pounding. They’d be out of breath and they’d be totally ener­gized by seeing Indige­nous people kicking ass on screen. You don’t really under­stand what just happened to you, but you have this level of energy, and it’s with Indige­nous repre­sen­ta­tion on screen. That was the main inten­tion behind the film.

Sylvia Cunningham: It’s so mesmer­izing and intriguing watching what everyone’s doing, there is really so much going on. In contrast, your other work at the Schirn, in the publicly acces­sible Rotunda, the video instal­la­tion “Transat­lantic,” is really devoid of human pres­ence. For that work, which we’re hearing a little bit of the audio from now, you embarked on a cargo ship from a port in Europe and then trav­eled to where you live now, to Montreal. Can you describe what that journey was like for you?

Caroline Monnet: Well “Transat­lantic” is a trip I took in 2012 on a cargo ship from the Dutch port of IJmuiden, just west of Amsterdam, all the way to Montreal, the Great Lakes in North America. It took me 22 days to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The whole journey was docu­mented through a mini-DV hand­held camera. The video carries different states of emotion that I felt at sea, like heavy tension, nervous­ness, boredom and even some­times a bit of fear, when we hit storms, but also because I was in a male-domi­nated envi­ron­ment of ship­ping and industry. There were moments where I did ask myself, why I thought about doing this trip in the first place. The initial idea behind it is that for me, the transat­lantic ocean was a middle ground for both my ances­tors to meet. It was kind of a symbolic place. This idea of borders, whether they’re phys­ical or metaphor­ical, has always been very present in my works, so it’s a contin­u­a­tion of that idea. I grew up between two conti­nents, two cultures, so I’ve been fasci­nated with this idea of duality and how polit­ical and social histo­ries shape your iden­tity. We always say that iden­tity is intrinsic to terri­tory, but what does it mean when you come from two distinc­tive terri­to­ries, how does that shape your iden­tity? That was the kind of seed behind the project. I filmed it in 2012, but it took me a good six years to finish it. I finished it in 2018 and I’m glad it actu­ally matured a little bit because then the project started looking into the Atlantic Ocean as an ongoing colo­nial move­ment and economic exchange between Europe and North America, and how colo­niza­tion is a histor­ical event defined by the transat­lantic slave trade and the geno­cide of Indige­nous people. So, it became a much more engaging piece rather than only a personal piece.

Sylvia Cunningham: What do you think it was in those six inter­vening years that allowed that framing and narra­tive to develop in your head? Was it a matter of research or other projects that influ­enced your reflec­tions on it?

Caroline Monnet: I took the trip and then the tapes were sitting on the shelf for a long time, I just didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have a clear idea of what to do with it. I knew I did not want it to just be a docu­men­tary piece, that’s why I removed all the men at work. It’s very abstract, it becomes almost like a vessel trav­eling across a great divide. It’s more of an expe­ri­ence rather than a docu­ment. It was very impor­tant for me to create an immer­sive expe­ri­ence with it, and it took me this long, I’m not sure why. “Mobi­lize” was done in only one month, from start to finish, from concept to delivery of the product, and “Transat­lantic” took me six years. I think I needed some level of matu­rity as an artist and as a thinker to envi­sion some kind of instal­la­tion rather than just a docu­ment that would play at film festi­vals. 

Sylvia Cunningham: What we see at the begin­ning of the film is this more indus­trial scene with smoke­stacks and then and at the end of this whole voyage, we see a cityscape at night, with lots of build­ings of course. I felt that those images are very anchoring because I know exactly where I am. But it’s the between where it’s just open waters, where you feel totally sucked in, where you feel like you can get lost. I’m wondering if that echoes a bit what it was like for you during your three-week journey. You were quite isolated, right? What was it like being out on the open waters where, like you said, it was just inter­ac­tion with the crew, there was no connec­tion to the outside world at all during those 22 days?

Caroline Monnet: No, which was an inter­esting concept. It’s true, you have no connec­tion to phone or internet, you’re really out at sea for 22 days and it’s kind of a pocket of time… you can’t go anywhere, this is where you are. Very inter­esting expe­ri­ence, all your refer­ences points, they all disap­pear because there are no markers on the horizon, it’s always the same. You start getting into a different state of mind which is a very intriguing place to be.

Sylvia Cunningham: Some­thing that my mom says, which I’m not totally sure I agree with, is that the best part of a trip is the part before, the plan­ning stage, looking forward to every­thing, the antic­i­pa­tion of the trip. And the after­wards, the memo­ries of it and kind of reliving it. What were your emotions upon arriving home to Montreal? The first night you were back on your bed, were you relieved or was a part of you already roman­ti­cizing being back on the open waters. How did your return feel?

Caroline Monnet: I think there was a level of roman­ti­cizing the idea of crossing the Atlantic Ocean, it’s the mytho­log­ical route of my father coming to France, migrating to Canada, and so many other people, so many other gener­a­tions and settlers’ expe­ri­ences. But yes, I was ecstatic when I arrived in Montreal to finally step foot on land, because it’s a long trip, you long for the people, for the connec­tion to the people you love. It was an inter­esting journey, but I’m not sure I agree with your mom on that one. There’s some­thing about going from point A to point B, the journey is what is fasci­nating how you grow as a person, and the idea of crossing a line or some­thing. The journey itself is inter­esting.

Sylvia Cunningham: Both of your works are being shown at the Schirn at the same time the Group of Seven’s work is being displayed there, for the first time in Germany actu­ally. How have you reflected on that context, espe­cially knowing for visi­tors that they’ll be presented with these different dimen­sions of art orig­i­nating from people in Canada. 

Caroline Monnet: Well defi­nitely growing up in Canada, the Group of Seven is kind of the first refer­ence you have of painting and Cana­dian art in general. Every child in Canada has grown up on it. You know all the great painters like Rembrandt, Picasso, but you also know the Group of Seven, so we come to under­stand Canada through those paint­ings. You espe­cially come to under­stand the repre­sen­ta­tion of Cana­dian land­scape through those paint­ings. But I guess my inter­pre­ta­tion of it is that these paint­ings contributed to telling a story that is very different from the Indige­nous perspec­tives because it was really about this pris­tine, unin­hab­ited, super terri­to­ries, waiting to be discov­ered. They call it the “terra nullius” although it was habited for centuries already. To simply remove that Indige­nous history from those stories, to remove the Indige­nous pres­ence from that history is perpet­u­ating the colo­nial gaze, the erasure of Indige­nous stories and people and the displace­ment of Indige­nous people. It’s a bitter­sweet rela­tion­ship with those paint­ings and the Group of Seven. Tech­ni­cally they’re spec­tac­ular and it’s a great move­ment, but at the same time, it contributes to exactly what we’re fighting against.

Sylvia Cunningham: Some­thing we talked about in the first episode of “Critical land” with Professor Carmen Robertson was the differ­ence between land and land­scape. What do those terms mean to you?

Caroline Monnet: Land­scape for me is a repre­sen­ta­tion of topog­raphy and it’s some­thing that is beau­tiful and that you can almost imagine, it’s part of an imag­i­na­tion. You can describe a land­scape. Whereas land is where we belong, it’s where every­thing orig­i­nates. We cannot possess the Earth, it’s the Earth that possesses us, we come from that and we go back to that. I think land is the notion of terri­tory and the center of all people because that’s where all the roots of our knowl­edge is from—our languages, our tradi­tion, our sense of belonging and sense of iden­tity—so I think there’s multiple terri­to­ries, multiple lands. There’s a diver­sity of it and I think we can only speak of the land we come from. I don’t think I could speak for “Cana­dian land,” I only know the place where I come from and the region I come from in Canada and the connec­tion that I have with that land in partic­ular and where my people have connec­tion to that land as well.

Sylvia Cunningham: I was watching a previous inter­view that you did, and I hope I’m under­standing what you said correctly, but you were talking about how you’re inter­ested in Indige­nous artists looking back at and reflecting on various art move­ments. How would you apply your perspec­tive to the Group of Seven’s land­scape paint­ings and the time in which they were painting in—that move­ment?

Caroline Monnet: Wow, that’s a really good ques­tion. I don’t know because it’s a move­ment in itself, but how would you call that move­ment in painting? It’s quite figu­ra­tive so I’m not sure it’s a move­ment that I would instinc­tively explore such as Modernism, or Dadaism or Surre­alism, where it becomes a real move­ment world­wide. This partic­ular group is very partic­ular to Canada and the repre­sen­ta­tion of land­scape. They’re kind of explorers on the land, right? They set up out on the land and they try to repre­sent it to the best of their abil­i­ties, but also adding their own settlers’ gaze, so it’s also a level of their own imag­i­na­tion that’s embedded in the work. It’s a really good ques­tion, I’ll have to reflect on that one, how would I appro­priate it from my own Indige­nous lens.

Sylvia Cunningham: You come from both Algo­nquin and French heritage, and I’ve seen how you’ve previ­ously talked about marrying tradi­tional prac­tices with contem­po­rary prac­tices. That your work is often building bridges. Did you learn about your Algo­nquin ancestry and heritage through your own upbringing, or have you come to learn more about this history and tradi­tions as an artist who is specif­i­cally confronting these themes in your art?

Caroline Monnet: I would say as an artist, I was doing work that is research-based. It allowed me to go deeper into these notions and this knowl­edge and learning more about where I come from, but it’s some­thing that was always present growing up, it’s just not some­thing you’d talk about around the kitchen table. You don’t really talk about your culture at home, it’s not some­thing you start defining with your parents, or your siblings, or aunts and uncles. It’s more as an artist when I start looking into topics that are impor­tant to me and wanting to discuss certain things in our society and wanting to open dialogue about certain issues of our society, then I start digging more and looking into more tradi­tional art or tradi­tional teach­ings, and just looking more into where my people come from. I grew up in suburbia of Ottawa, so I didn’t grow up in my mother’s commu­nity. We would go back for funerals, or weddings, but it wasn’t some­thing that was super cele­brated growing up. It’s only later, when it became a little more accepted in Cana­dian society, that I was able to dig a bit deeper.

Sylvia Cunningham: Has that since become a bridge to your mother and extended family? I mean, has it become some­thing you maybe would talk about around the kitchen table?

Caroline Monnet: Maybe a little bit more because now it’s so embedded in my life and the work that I do. So yes of course if my mom asks me what I’m working on I’ll tell her more about it or just the people that I have in my surround­ings. It took only four gener­a­tions with cultural geno­cide to erase us. Not even 50 years ago we weren’t allowed to express ourselves creatively so there’s a certain level of respon­si­bility that comes with the new gener­a­tion, and my gener­a­tion to be able to be present and keep those tradi­tions alive. There’s kind of a gap between my grand­fa­ther and myself, just to be able to work to bridge that gap and to bring that back into my own family and my own surrounding.

Sylvia Cunningham: I’d love to touch on one more of your films, “Crea­tura Dada.” I was plan­ning on describing it myself, but actu­ally I’d love if you would describe it instead, what this short film is.

Caroline Monnet: It was the 100th anniver­sary of Dadaism and I was asked by the Festival du nouveau cinéma in Montreal to create a Carte Blanche, to make a very short video. I had the “white page complex,” I didn’t know what to do. So I decided to take the small budget they offered me and invite Indige­nous Fran­cophone women at my table to make a feast and buy cham­pagne and treat them to a nice after­noon expe­ri­ence. It’s very rare that we get the chance to get together and just exchange and dialogue and spend time together. These women are promi­nent leaders of their commu­ni­ties, they’re artists like Nadia Myre but also Alanis Obom­sawin who is this amazing role model for the Indige­nous commu­ni­ties. I filmed the entire expe­ri­ence and it was about breaking all rules because they don’t suit us in Cana­dian society and rein­venting the world as we see fit. It was about marching forward as women, as leaders of our commu­ni­ties.

Sylvia Cunningham: And again, listeners should defi­nitely watch this after the inter­view, because as you describe it, it is this gorgeous party and there’s so much laughter and so much life. I think espe­cially right now, espe­cially when dinner parties are basi­cally a no-go during the pandemic, there’s some­thing espe­cially entrancing about watching that.
[Audio from “Crea­tura Dada”]
We should note, you can’t hear the orig­inal sound. So, it begs the ques­tion, what were you all talking about. Can you describe what the sound is, what we’re hearing instead and what made you not include the orig­inal sound?

Caroline Monnet: It felt like we needed to keep that secret. We can’t reveal every­thing because we were plan­ning a revo­lu­tion, we can’t let everyone know about it, because then the plan doesn’t work! And every­body’s going to know about it. It’s also inter­esting because all this food is consid­ered high-end food in gastronomy, but most of it is very local, tradi­tional food—lobsters, oysters. I made this film after there was a big issue in the media about Indige­nous women being abused by police offi­cers in the Abitibi region and this film was a bit of response about coun­tering the nega­tive, victim­ized image of Indige­nous people or women espe­cially in the media. Women are still the most margin­al­ized group of Cana­dian society. I wanted to show women as being eccen­tric, beau­tiful, exuberant, elegant, and raise them back on a pedestal, to raise them back to a level of royalty. That was the inten­tion behind the film.

Sylvia Cunningham: I came across this quote recently from a musi­cian that the “pandemic is not a resi­dency” or an “artists retreat,” in response to external or maybe self-applied pres­sure to produce new work and be super creative in lock­down. How has it been for you?

Caroline Monnet: It’s been a good time in terms of slowing down a little bit because as artists we’re always in the stage of producing and presenting and repre­senting. To take the time to not travel as much, to reflect more on research and prep­ping for what’s to come and reorient the work you’re doing, it’s been good. I was working on finishing my first feature film, which was good for me to take more of my time in post-produc­tion rather than rush it and move onto the next project. I took a little bit of break and never approached it as a time of creating, it didn’t really slow down for me, I had to work differ­ently I would say.

Sylvia Cunningham: That feature film, “Boot­legger,”—which you co-wrote and it won best screen­play at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017—can you tell us a bit about where you are with it, also what it’s about and when we can see it?

Caroline Monnet: The film is in the final stages of post-produc­tion. We shot it in December 2019 and we’re just finishing it now. Hope­fully we’ll be able to release it a little bit later on this year, maybe this summer or next fall. But that’s really out of my hands, it’s the produc­tion company and the rest of the people that are going to orga­nize all of that. But it’s exciting to be able to make a first feature film. It’s a bit nerve-wracking to be doing such a project in a time of pandemic because we don’t know how these films are going to end up—if we’re going to have people in cinemas, if we’re going to have film festival premieres, is it going to end up online? And there’s a little bit of a disap­point­ment because you work five years on a project to have it end up online and people watch it on their screens. But it’s also a different expe­ri­ence and maybe it can reach more people this way. We adapt, and there’s good and bad for every­thing.

Sylvia Cunningham: The musi­cian Tanya Tagaq, who provided music for “Mobi­lize,” will also be doing the music for “Boot­legger,” right?

Caroline Monnet: Exactly, it’s an ongoing collab­o­ra­tion. I was really happy Tanya Tagaq accepted to do the music. She worked in collab­o­ra­tion with Jean Martin, who she collab­o­rates with usually. I’m very happy with the way it turned out and the sounds that they created together.

Sylvia Cunningham: How do you find that the music comple­ments the plot and themes of “Boot­legger”? 

Caroline Monnet: “Boot­legger” is about self-deter­mi­na­tion and taking destiny in your own hands, breaking away from pater­nal­istic laws. The music is about the connec­tion to land, terri­tory, wanting to break free. Tanya Tagaq has the perfect sound and energy for these things. It’s this longing for self-deter­mi­na­tion, so I was really happy with the merging of my visuals with that music.

Sylvia Cunningham: You work on multiple projects at once. Do you find the ideas that you’re working through in one piece will kind of find their way into another? Or do you keep them very sepa­rate?

Caroline Monnet: It’s very ebb and flow, I don’t plan anything in advance. I feel that each project leads to the next one, and my prac­tice is quite instinc­tive. It’s about exper­i­menting with the work but also with myself and hoping to evolve as an indi­vidual and making sure that the work evolves with each project. Working with different disci­plines keeps me on my toes, it keeps me invested and inter­ested. Also, it keeps me outside of my comfort zone, and I think that’s where I can grow as an artist and a person, where I can learn. But the themes and the issues and the way I approach each project is the same, my level of interest is the same, and there’s always social engage­ment. I studied soci­ology, so there’s always a lot of social back­ground to each project that I do, whether it’s in visual or sculp­tural form or video form. It’s always very present, that kind of soci­ology back­ground. It’s very research-based and visual. Even in film­making, there’s not that many dialogues, no too many words. It’s about creating an expe­ri­ence, an emotional expe­ri­ence with as little words as possible. It’s a minimal approach.

Sylvia Cunningham: This year, you’ll have your first solo exhi­bi­tion at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Can you share with us what you’re working on for that?

Caroline Monnet: Yes, the show will be titled “Ninga Mìnèh.” It’s a word in Anishi­naabe­mowin which means “I give it to you” or it’s the word we use for “promise.” I looked at the housing situ­a­tion in Indige­nous commu­ni­ties that have remained griev­ously unchanged over the years. In remote regions with harsh winters, construc­tion mate­rials can be scarce and very expen­sive. They’re not very adapted to the envi­ron­ment there in the north, so there’s a housing crisis. I wanted to speak about that and the lack of vision from the Cana­dian govern­ment. I believe that we make our houses and our houses make us, so if we use cheap mate­rials and if there’s lingering mois­ture that creates mold, that defi­nitely affects our mental, phys­ical, and spir­i­tual health. I think houses should be treated as living bodies, so the entire exhi­bi­tion is about that, it’s using construc­tion mate­rial with embed­ding tradi­tional-inspired designs. It’s about taking a look at how the federal housing system has been an agent in creating poverty in these commu­ni­ties and what we can do. Offering or hoping to open a dialogue about it.

Sylvia Cunningham: If we make our houses and our houses make us, how do you think your house makes you and how do you make it? Do you think you apply that person­ally to how you build your home?

Caroline Monnet: Yes, absolutely. I put a lot of care in my envi­ron­ment. I really believe we affect the envi­ron­ment around us and the envi­ron­ment affects us. We always imagine the people repre­senting the places they live in, but in the case of certain Indige­nous commu­ni­ties, I don’t think that’s true. I think there’s a lack of resources to create proper homes. This exhi­bi­tion wants to break those precon­cep­tions and break those nega­tive stereo­types. In my case, right now my studio is quite busy, but usually it’s pretty orga­nized and clean. Every time I start a new project, I’ll make sure that I do a clean-up, just to have that mental space to clear things up. I don’t like clutter, but that’s me. I mean other people are comfort­able with that. I person­ally need some white walls to be able to imagine other things.

Sylvia Cunningham: Caro­line Monnet, multi­dis­ci­pli­nary artist whose works, “Mobi­lize” and “Transat­lantic” are on display at the Schirn. Thank you so much for joining me.

Caroline Monnet: Oh, my plea­sure.

Some of the artists and film­makers Caro­line Monnet says inspire her include: Teresa Margolles, Lisa Reihana, Maya Deren, Theaster Gates and Apichat­pong Weerasethakul.