An Indigenous Present is a thematic exhibition spanning 100 years of contemporary Indigenous art. The exhibition includes new commissions and significant works by 15 artists who use strategies of abstraction to represent personal and collective narratives, describe specific and imagined places, and build upon cultural and aesthetic traditions.

Caroline Monnet’s (Algonquin-Anishinaabe and French; b. 1985 in Ottawa, Ontario) installation response to the ICA’s location at the edge of the harbour and is plotted with “blooms” that expand fractal-like, symbolizing Boston’s 400-year history of land reclamation. The land the ICA is built upon is man-made, a constructed environment the artists represents using commercial building materials—like Tyvek, plastic, and foil insulation—that she transfigures through laborious handwork: cutting, piecing, and sewing. The intricately layered materials cohere into geometric circles and lines that Monnet abstracts from Anishinaabe designs found on regalia, birch bark baskets, and beadwork. Man Made Land is a meditation, as she explains, “on the interconnectedness of all living things… a way to transmit cultural knowledge and values across generations, reinforcing a sense of community and belonging.”