Latest news with #Monkman
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.
New York Times
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
How ‘Miss Chief' Can Help Us Rethink Art History
Determined to paint Indigenous people into art history and museums in a more meaningful way, the artist Kent Monkman created a character called Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. The move succeeded. She appears in more than half of the 41 works in the Denver Art Museum show 'Kent Monkman: History is Painted by the Victors,' on view until Aug. 17. A well-muscled, nonbinary and Indigenous figure, she is a key presence in Monkman's versions of important historical moments — somehow seeming to be in many places at once. She brings mischief to the scenes, upending our understanding of art history with a smile and a pointed agenda. Miss Chief got a burst of attention in 2019 when she appeared in two large paintings that bedecked the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for nearly a year and a half, commissions that were an important recognition of Monkman's work. Both are in the Denver show. In one of them, 'mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People): Resurgence of the People,' she is naked except for high heels and a diaphanous, hot-pink scarf while standing astride a boat and holding out a feather. Her pose is meant to recall that of George Washington in 'Washington Crossing the Delaware' and evoke other history paintings. Monkman, 59, does not include Miss Chief in all of his works, but she embodies the philosophy behind many of his projects. 'The predominant narrative from the art history of this continent has been told very subjectively, from a settler point of view,' said Monkman, who is a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation. 'I was interested in museums and what they were showing and the stories that they were telling, so I could perhaps correct some of those conversations.' In other words, when Indigenous people are the protagonists, things look radically different. The Denver exhibition is Monkman's first museum survey in the United States. Many of the paintings are large, complicated compositions with multiple figures. John P. Lukavic, a curator at the Denver museum who heads the native arts department, said that Monkman's work 'gets right to the point' and explores important issues such as the disproportional rates of incarceration and institutionalization of Indigenous people. Monkman, who grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, now splits time between Toronto and New York. This conversation, which has been edited and condensed, took place in his Manhattan studio. How present was Cree culture in your childhood? My dad grew up living a traditional lifestyle. He was Cree and grew up fishing on Lake Winnipeg and had a dog team. He was also a bush pilot. Part of my childhood was flying with my dad up north; he took people in and out of reserves. It was pretty cool. Were you always drawing? Mom was a teacher. We didn't have a lot of money, so paper and crayons were the cheapest form of entertainment. I was one of those precocious kids saying, 'Look what I did.' I was fortunate that in high school, I had a drafting teacher and an art teacher who said, 'You should become an illustrator.' The first couple of years out of Sheridan College in Ontario, I did storyboards for an ad agency, and that was great. Pure ideation to paper, really fast. I did thousands and thousands of drawings. Drawing became second nature. Once you started painting for yourself, what direction did you go? I completely rejected all representational image-making at that point, because I thought real artists make abstract paintings. This was the mid- to late '80s. And I was an abstract painter until the late '90s. How did those works look? I used the syllabics of the Cree language, which functioned as the surface layer, and submerged below that were shapes that referenced entangled bodies. It was a way to talk about colonized sexuality. Why did you change styles so dramatically? I spent 10 years trying to find my mark, and I found it. I was really proud of them. I still have them all — because nobody bought them. When I showed them, people scratched their heads or wanted to buy them to go with their couch, horror of horrors. So audience feedback was the core of it? It was a desire to communicate. I was making art because I wanted to say something, and if people aren't understanding or reading what I'm saying, I'm failing. I thought, 'Now I'm going to disappear my hand and go into stealth mode.' What was the trick to making crowded and grand history paintings? It was a humbling moment when I realized how difficult it is to actually make this kind of work. But everything I did in those 10 years of abstract painting had been leading me toward a deep understanding of color, transparency and the alchemy of painting. All of those ingredients are still at play. Now I've added storytelling. I really felt it was a maturing moment as an artist. You're not the first to use painters of the past as a launching point. When you really look at how old masters learn from each other, they were always trying to emulate each other — Delacroix was obsessed with Rubens, for instance. I love Delacroix. Rubens and Géricault I come back to a lot. How did your process evolve? I decided that I was going to embrace the old master atelier model of working with assistants. Behind me is a study for 'Miss Chief's Wet Dream' [a painting in the Denver show]. It's partly inspired by '[The] Raft of the Medusa' [by Théodore Géricault] and also a treaty between the Iroquois and the Dutch that was symbolized by two vessels traveling in parallel. The European settlers are about to collide with this canoe of Indigenous characters. I'm interested in what happens when those cultures literally clash. What was the breakthrough? It was that painting that helped my studio figure out the process and the methodology for making large paintings, which enabled us to take the Met commission. I like big paintings. I like how that shifts your perception when you enter the world. So this represents the turning point where I said, 'I can't just make all these big paintings myself.' We sometimes do two to three painted studies on our way to the larger version. I prefer to work out the complexity of the composition first as a pencil or charcoal drawing, because then the mistakes are easier to change. Once you commit to canvas, it's a little more work. What are the tools you use? We're painting from our own photos. We decided to use digital photography, and we got help with lighting and figured out how to pose models with costuming so we could get better source material. How was Miss Chief born? Miss Chief was created around 2003 because I needed this alter ego to live inside the work that could reverse the gaze and be a storyteller, to represent missing narratives. She is basically this legendary being that is stitched into Cree cosmology and lives in that universe with our other legendary beings. She's our trickster character, a shape-shifter. In Indigenous mythologies, the trickster is often the creator. How important is she to your work? That was really how I was able to just grow my art project from those abstract Cree paintings — I found a language of painting that would be more understood by a much wider audience. What does her nonbinary status signify? She was created to talk about an empowered and traditional understanding of sexuality and gender identity that existed all throughout North America among Indigenous people. Gender-fluid people were revered. Some of your newer works are set in the present. How do those serve your mission? I have a new series called 'The Knowledge Keepers.' These were paintings I wanted to make about our elders, who were put into the residential schools — sometimes called boarding schools — as children. [In 2010, the Canadian government officially apologized for the attempt to erase Indigenous cultures by isolating children in the schools.] These are to really celebrate the resilience of our elders for keeping their language despite these attempts to erase it. My grandmother was one of these little girls in the schools, and that impacted our family through intergenerational trauma. These paintings are to honor small acts of resilience. One newer work, 'Compositional Study for The Sparrow,' strikes me because it's relatively empty, with a lone girl reaching out. It was really to represent loneliness, the removal of children from their families. There were no parents or grandparents there. These were not welcoming environments for young Indigenous children. We took inspiration from Vermeer — the window and the light cascading in. What does the light represent? For me, this image speaks to hope. We're still here. Our elders survived. They held the language. They became our heroes.
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.
