Victorious milestone

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This article was published 05/05/2025 (496 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.sweatman@winnipegfreepress.com