Art critic Robert Enright talks Monkman’s career and influence
The first time I saw Kent Monkman’s work, I was astounded. Complex, but incredibly accessible, Monkman is rocking the Canadian art scene with his gorgeous paintings packed with references to Canadian history from pre-confederation to present day, and to ancient myths and the old masters of Western painting. It’s no wonder that he recently won a Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. He also kicked off a three year, nationwide touring exhibition entitled Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience in January.
Commissioned for Canada’s 150, Monkman’s new show seeks to shake up the narrative and get Canadians thinking about the past 150 years — the positive and the sobering. His alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle (say it out loud), appears as a time-travelling diva, commenting on what she encounters on her travels in the Shame and Prejudice exhibition. It’s a unique queer and indigenous perspective, which makes his work stand out and captures viewers’ imaginations.
Robert Enright, an art critic, curator, journalist, and professor at the University of Guelph, interviewed Monkman earlier this year about his Shame and Prejudice tour.
“Kent is very intelligent in the sometimes difficult line that he negotiates between satire and humour and real anger. I think it’s a condition that all Indigenous artists in this country [deal with],” said Enright in an interview with The Ontarion.
It’s a fascinating subject, and one to which Enright credits Monkman’s success in gaining the attention and patronage of so many galleries across Canada in this sesquicentennial year. “[History] has to be retold and this is precisely the right year to do it,” said Enright. “I can’t imagine a better time to look at Canada’s history than a year where we’re celebrating that history.”
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As both a two-spirited and an indigenous person, Monkman has a unique ability to not only look at history in a new way, but to criticize it and show us an alternate, idealistic scenario through Miss Chief and her interactions with history. “He opens our eyes, and there’s many more eyes looking at that history now because of the kind of work that Kent and artists like him are doing,” said Enright.
Enright mentions an old cliché: that history is “told by the victors, not the vanquished.”
“There’s a shift happening,” said Enright, “where the vanquished are positioning themselves, quite properly, in taking the history over.”
We reached Robert Enright in Winnipeg for his take on Monkman’s work and importance.
Cat Cooper: When did you discover Kent Monkman, and do you remember the first piece you saw?
Robert Enright: It must’ve been ten years ago when I first saw his paintings, and his rather unique way of reinterpreting history from both an indigenous and a queer perspective. I saw his performances, when he entered that persona that he’d invented for himself, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. I was entranced by the intelligence and variety of his practice. Even back then Kent was drawing and doing prints and painting as well as doing performances, and he was also constructing films using the same persona. He had a very rich practice that got richer and richer as he continued to make work.
CC: How does Kent’s remix of myth, history, and art history make such an effective medium?
RE: The old cliché about history is “always told by the victors, not the vanquished.” The process we’re undergoing in this country — which is a very healthy and at the same time problematic one, because it’s not easy — is that there’s a shift happening where the vanquished are positioning themselves, quite properly, in taking the history over. And when they take the history over, they get to depict that history from their perspective, not from the perspective of settler and colonial culture. We’re at a very interesting moment, and Kent’s work is perched precisely at that moment.
Another Canadian painter — I interviewed him years ago — Attila Richard Lukacs said what he wanted to do was to take the great founding myths of Western civilization, like the fall, and re-gender them. Attila looks at the Garden of Eden, and it doesn’t have Adam and Eve, it has two Adams. You take the big stories, you say, “Okay, I’m going to fill them with my content, not the content that I’ve inherited through the culture that has been oppressive towards me.” That’s precisely what’s happening with Kent’s work. That history is being reinterpreted, and in a sense re-peopled, reimagined, reconstituted from an Indigenous, queer perspective, and that makes it a different story. You can’t deny history, you can’t pretend that the residential school system didn’t happen. You can’t pretend that the railroad didn’t displace and destroy lots of Indigenous cultures. Those are historical facts, but how we look at that history and how we try and finesse a different narrative out of it becomes an extremely interesting and necessary process. Kent and a lot of Indigenous artists working in various ways are really going head on at that retelling of Canadian history. That gives us a richer culture, not a less rich one.
CC: I know we talked a lot about how this is bringing more attention to the history, but what does this installation in particular mean for the Indigenous and the Canadian community, as this does coincide with Canada’s 150?
RE: What better time to try and refocus the narrative than in an anniversary year? I’m sure the Canadian government — Mr. Trudeau and his cabinet — would love to see the 150th year pass on by, saying “Hasn’t it been a wonderful 150 years?” Well, it’s been a problematic 150 years in lots of ways. The founding narrative of two peoples, French and English, which excludes Indigenous culture in the narrative — it has to be retold and this is precisely the right year to do it. I can’t imagine a better time to look at Canada’s history than a year where we’re celebrating that history. What’s the nature of this history? What did it do? Who got left out? Who has to be brought in again? How do we change the narrative?
That’s what Kent’s work is doing and it’s interesting that it starts in this year. The residue of this show, and its slipstream, is going to be pretty rich because it’s going to be going on for another two and a half years. He’ll be bringing to our attention the problematic of Canadian history and its monocular view of the way things happened. He opens our eyes, and there’s many more eyes looking at that history now because of the kind of work that Kent and artists like him are doing.
Photo courtesy of Kent Monkman