Latest news with #KentMonkman
CBC
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
ImagineNATIVE celebrates 25 years of Indigenous cinema in summer event
The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto celebrates its 25th year in 2025 with a move to summer. Naomi Johnson, the festival's executive director, said she's hoping the festival's new June dates will set them apart from the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). In previous years, imagineNATIVE was held in October about a month after TIFF. "We had to get away from that fall season," she said. "It's just very packed in the city, especially because we're the first festival to follow TIFF, so it was getting very unmanageable in trying to get our events noticed. She said this year they've been able to collaborate and cross-promote with other organizations and events across the city which she thinks is a result of the festival's new date. This year there are 20 feature films, 79 short films, 14 digital and interactive works and 17 audio works. "We have 55 Indigenous nations from all around the world. There's going to be 27 Indigenous languages represented from 16 different countries," Johnson said. Recently confirmed, Johnson said, is the festival's Art Crawl event on June 5 at the Royal Ontario Museum that will feature Cree artist Kent Monkman's alter-ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. This year will also include a retrospective of the festival's 25 years. "A big part of the theme is looking back, acknowledging those that got us here and holding the space now for those that are going to take it one day," Johnson said. Johnson said her work has brought her to other parts of the world where Indigenous populations are not even recognized by the government. "It's kind of a brag, you know, that we have this festival in Canada and it's a tribute to Canada's support of the arts," she said. Festival launches careers Trevor Solway, a Blackfoot filmmaker from Siksika Nation, said the festival helped launch his career. It's where he met Jason Ryle, imagineNATIVE's longtime artistic director, who went on to produce a few of Solway's projects. "My very first film called Indian Giver was developed with their mentorship program and it really was like the start of everything for me in filmmaking," Solway told CBC Indigenous. He has three works in the festival this year: a feature-length documentary and two short films. Siksikakowan: The Blackfoot Man is a cinéma vérité-style documentary, filmed over four years, that explores masculinity within his community. "We've always been this kind of savage Indian or been like this noble Indian. Rarely are we seen as multidimensional people," he said. Settler is an 11-minute horror film about an 1800s family that moves to Blackfoot Country and is visited by the Blackfoot trickster Napi. Pendleton Man is another short horror film about three young Blackfoot cousins home alone who are haunted by the Pendleton Man. Of the festival's new date, Solway said it's important for festivals to change and evolve. "I'm looking forward to seeing what that looks like in the summer months and during National Indigenous Peoples Month," he said. Singer/songwriter Lacey Hill from Six Nations and two-time Juno award-winner Derek Miller will be performing at the imagineNATIVE awards presentation, where the August Schellenberg Award of Excellence will be presented to actor Graham Greene. Hill said she's been a long-time festival attendee and performer. "I've been watching imagineNATIVE form over the years and been a part of it too with music videos," she said. "It can stand on its own because it's got all this support." The in-person festival runs June 3-8 with most screenings at the TIFF Lightbox theatre in Toronto. ImagineNATIVE's online festival runs June 9-15.
Winnipeg Free Press
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Victorious milestone
Miss Chief Eagle Testickle likes to show up without invitation. In Kent Monkman's vision, the two-spirit trickster intrudes semi-nude on the Fathers of Confederation as they plot the British colonies' future. She replaces Washington, clad in drag, during the Delaware crossing. These are the sorts of provocations, captured in massive paintings with the exquisite technique of the Old Masters, that's made Monkman one of Canada's most celebrated (and infamous) artists. KENT MONKMAN Kent Monkman's Miss Chief's Wet Dream, 2018 KENT MONKMAN And as of a couple of weeks ago, Miss Chief has taken up space in another distinguished setting — this time, with a friendly invitation. History Is Painted by the Victors (to Aug. 17) at the Denver Art Museum marks the first major American exhibit for the artist from Fisher River Cree Nation who grew up in Winnipeg. The show is represented in a sumptuous hardcover book, an exhibition catalogue by the same name, that can be purchased online. 'The exhibit's quite a milestone in my career,' says Monkman. 'They're behind (in the U.S.) in terms of some conversations around Indigenous people, but they're moving forward and Indigenous contemporary art is really starting to get some traction.' Monkman now splits his time between Toronto and New York. At 59, he's still youthful, debonair even, and seems to be entering the golden era of an already illustrious career. RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS FILES Acclaimed Fisher River Cree Nation artist Kent Monkman's work takes aim at the art world as much as the social world. RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS FILES From 2019 to '21, two monumental works of his greeted visitors to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, thanks to a commission for their Great Hall — some of the most coveted real estate of any art gallery in the world. Since then, demand — and auction records — for Monkman's work have soared and glowing references have piled up in the New York Times, Guardian and international art press. But the artist, who's still exhibited regularly in Winnipeg (notable recent examples include the WAG-Qaumajuq's blockbuster Kent Monkman show, Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience, in 2019-20), has not left his hometown simply in his rearview window. The spectre of the Prairies looms large in his work. 'It's important to give locality to his work as Kent references Winnipeg and Manitoba a lot,' says Adrienne Huard, a Winnipeg-based Anishinaabe curator and scholar (who uses they/them pronouns). They contributed a chapter to the Denver exhibit catalogue about the Canadian Prairies' influence on Monkman. 'And I think there are quite a few important conversations that are happening here, including around MMIWG2S (missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit) and two-spiritedness, whereas other places aren't quite there yet.' KENT MONKMAN Le Petit déjeuner sur l'herbe, 2014. Monkman's art frequently references Winnipeg and Manitoba. KENT MONKMAN History Is Painted by the Victors is something of a retrospective of a career still in bloom. It covers 20 odd years of artmaking after Monkman turned away from abstraction in the early 2000s towards his signature history and landscape painting style. 'Normally I'm kind of involved as a curator, but this was a very different project,' says Monkman. '(Curator John Lukavic) assembled works in an order that he felt represented different themes in my work, with the idea of introducing my work, in many ways, to the American audience.' This includes, among other things, selections from his Urban Res series from roughly 10 years ago, depicting Winnipeg's North End. Tattooed Renaissance angels, buffalo, bears, police and escaped prisoners collide in scenes unfolding along Sutherland Avenue and Main Street while Miss Chief, Monkman's alter ego, bears witness. KENT MONKMAN The Deposition. KENT MONKMAN The Deposition. In one work, Le Petit déjeuner sur l'herbe, modernist, Picasso-like feminine figures lie scattered along the street in front of Winnipeg's New West Hotel. 'There's a brutality to Picasso's style (depicting women),' says Huard. 'And this scenery reflects the violence that Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit peoples face. They've been discarded, hypersexualized.' Monkman's work takes aim at the art world as much as the social world, and these critiques intersect where modernism is concerned. He's connected modernism — with its ideas of progress and innovation — in the visual arts with the colonial project of modernizing Turtle Island by violent force. This has helped inspire him to rediscover more traditional European styles, like history painting, pooh-poohed by Picasso and the modernists. 'It's such a sophisticated visual language that was essentially discarded by the modernists,' says Monkman. 'I want to use it to convey Indigenous experiences, both contemporary and historical. We have this whole universe and our cosmologies weren't conveyed or understood… I want to find a language enabling me to reach the widest audience possible.' KENT MONKMAN Seeing Red, 2014. KENT MONKMAN Seeing Red, 2014. The irony that history painting has its own Eurocentric trappings isn't lost on Monkman or his scholars. But as Huard reflects, this sort of tension speaks to the experience of Winnipeg Indigenous artists and communities in general. 'I think we're allowed to critique colonial structures,' Huard says, 'and also participate within those structures.' After its spring run at the Denver Art Museum, History is Painted by the Victors travels to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and will be open to the public from Sept. 27 to March 8, 2026. Conrad SweatmanReporter Conrad Sweatman is an arts reporter and feature writer. Before joining the Free Press full-time in 2024, he worked in the U.K. and Canadian cultural sectors, freelanced for outlets including The Walrus, VICE and Prairie Fire. Read more about Conrad. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Forbes
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Kent Monkman At Denver Art Museum: One Painting, One Little Girl, One Genocide
Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree Nation), 'The Scream,' 2017. Acrylic paint on canvas; 84 x 132 in. Denver Art Museum: Native Arts acquisition funds, purchased with funds from Loren G. Lipson, M.D, 2017.93. © Kent Monkman History is painted by the victors. Except when it's not. Those are among the greatest paintings in art history. Francisco Goya's The Third of May 1808 (1814) Theodore Gericault's Raft of the Madusa (1818-19). Picasso's Guernica (1937). Jacob Lawrence's 'Migration Series' (1940-41). Amy Sherald's portrait of Breonna Taylor (2020). These artworks reveal history as experienced by the oppressed, not history enforced by the powerful. A people's history, not a dictator's history. History as seen from the barrel end of a rifle, not the trigger end. Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree Nation, b. 1965) follows in this grand tradition of history painting. The Denver Art Museum premiers the artist's first major survey in the United States in partnership with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts during 'Kent Monkman: History is Painted by the Victors,' on view from April 20, 2025, through August 17, 2025. The title, of course, mirrors the well-trod expression: history is written by the victors. Those who vanquish their enemies are the ones who write the books and songs and movies about what took place, why, and how. History is generally written by the victors. Painted by the victors. Sanitized by the victors. 'Massacres' described as battles. Forced starvation and stolen land spun into bedtime stories of inevitable progress. Indigenous people rebranded 'savages.' Genocide rebranded as 'Western expansion' or 'self-defense.' Nature rebranded as 'resource.' Invaders called 'settlers.' Butchers called 'discoverers' and 'heroes.' Enslavers = 'farmers.' Robber barons = 'entrepreneurs.' Through 41 monumental works–heart-breaking, stomach churning, violent depictions of colonization, the wanton destruction of wildlife, Indigenous children kidnapped from their homes by Catholic nuns and Royal Canadian Mounted Police–the exhibition presents Monkman confronting a range of agonizing subjects through large-scale history paintings: the absence and erasure of Indigenous artists in the art history canon, the representation of 2SLGBTQ+ (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, plus) people in art, the ongoing project to decolonize bodies and sexuality while challenging gender norms, and generational trauma inflicted by forced residential and boarding school experiences. That last subject is where Monkman's artistic brilliance achieves its greatest height. Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree Nation), Compositional Study for 'The Sparrow,' 2022. Acrylic paint on canvas, 43 × 36 in. From the collection of Brian A. Tschumper. © and image courtesy of Kent Monkman Canada's residential schools and America's Indian boarding schools were tools of genocide. Native kids were forcibly and illegally removed from their families–kidnapped–and sent hundreds of miles away to 'schools' that more closely resembled concentration camps. Forced labor. Physical, mental, emotional, and sexual abuse. Forced indoctrination into Christianity. Into 'white' thinking. Native children were forbidden from practicing or learning their languages, cultures, or spirituality. Punished–severely–when they tried. An untold number died in the custody of these schools. Children were of course not free to come and go as they pleased. The schools operated from the late 19th century into the later part of the 20th century in some cases. The generational trauma caused continues. How could this century long atrocity experienced by hundreds of thousands of stolen children and robbed parents be summarized in a single artwork? Not a 700-page book or a 5-hour movie, but one painting? That's what artists do. That's what Kent Monkman has done in his Compositional Study for The Sparrow (2022) on view in the show. Monkman distills that universe of pain down into one little girl. Using a baseball analogy, no painter throws harder than Kent Monkman. His pictures are 98-mph up and in. Nasty. Confrontational. With the residential schools and The Sparrow–the worst of the worst, the definition of cultural genocide–Monkman doesn't rare back and throw as hard as he can to strike out the batter, he throws a looping, off-speed curveball to devastating effect. The Sparrow isn't noisy and roiled and full of figures. It's quiet. Solitary. One little girl wearing a nightgown stretches toward a sparrow which has landed upon the open window of a boarding school barracks. A gentle breeze blows through the window, catching the curtain and the girl's closely clipped hair–a reference to how the schools stripped Indigenous children of their customs and heritage. The sun shines on her face. A gentle sun penetrating her prison. A moment of warmth. The sparrow is freedom. The outside. Nature. The life Indigenous people across what is now called North America once knew. The life this little girl's ancestors knew. The life–the freedom–she never will due to European colonization. The girl strains on tiptoe to touch the sparrow, to reach freedom, but she's not tall enough. The bird–freedom–remains just out of reach. Why? The cross conspicuously placed on the back wall holds those answers. History as written by the victors. Cultural and literal genocide rebranded as 'missioning' and 'civilizing.' Dominance rebranded as 'religion.' It's all right there. A painting to weep over. A story to weep over. Kent Monkman painting history, not from the winner's side.
