This past weekend at the University of Victoria (my alma mater) on Vancouver Island, I had the exciting privilege to go to a presentation and talk back with Canadian Indigenous artist (and one of my biggest art crushes) Kent Monkman.
During his presentation he discussed elements of his work that touched on themes we had discussed in class- including indigenous ways of knowing and technology, the question of what constitutes a technology and how can we use it, and how who is “writing” or creating history shapes what we learn.
Kent Monkman is a Cree, Two-Spirit (meaning in simplified terms that he has both genders, a very respected and celebrated identity in many indigenous Canadian nations) artist from the Fish River band in Manitoba. He began his talk with how his current art style evolved- a highly representational technique that borrows from artists such as Carvaggio and European artists that painted the North American landscape from a Eurocentric perspective. He reflected how a painting, “Execution of Torrijos and his Companions” by Antonio Gisbert, 1888
first stopped him in his tracks and communicated, through generations, a specific history and moment in time. He realized that this form of representational painting, a form of art that Eurocentric art practices had actually rejected and abandoned by European artists, was a powerful technology used to communicate history through time. He wanted to use this form to “decolonize art history” through representing people and events that were more true to indigenous history that the settler paintings of “American Indian” life and to stop people in their tracks the way he had been stopped before.
One of the results of this was “The Scream”, in his exhibit Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience for the University of Toronto’s Art Museum commissioned for Canada 150. Presented in a black room framed by cradleboards, and the ghosts outlines of missing cradleboards, “The Scream” depicts nuns and priests ripping indigenous children from their family’s arms to take them to residential schools- a major, and often glossed over, part of Canada’s colonial history. The result is as arresting as Monkman had intended, and a perfect example of how an “old technology” such as realist, representational painting can communicate information and history. Especially since in the majority of galleries, European artists are presented as “authorities on Indigenous art and life” as Monkman described, this re-writing of history and presentation of a new “agential cut” of Canada’s existence is necessary and urgent.
In the talk back component of the lecture, Monkman described how many indigenous nations think of passing history and tools down for generations, not in terms of years. In describing one of his new paintings “Cain and Abel” which depicts trans warriors, he expressed that ideally generations from now trans individuals (and indigenous individuals) can trace their history and representation of themselves in art as a lasting form.
I personally believe as we move into a increasingly digitized age, where data is seemingly intangible and fragile, old technology such as painting does serve as a powerful, lasting and “non-edited” way of viewing the world. And powerful new diverse voices like Monkman’s are required to ensure that view is representational for years to come.
Source: “Trans as the New Frontier”
Kent Monkman
Moving Trans History Forward Conference
At the University of Victoria
March 24th, 2018
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