Born 1965, Winnipeg. Lives and works in Toronto.
Kent Monkman's large-scale history paintings are revisionist investigations of early European, British and American reportage on First Nation cultures. They take their visual cues from a controversial image of savage yet noble indigenous cultures. As the nineteenth century began, the vast area west of the Mississippi and Red River systems was a mysterious void to most North Americans. However, from 1803, more than three million square miles revealed their secrets to an army of naturalists, adventurers and invaders.
In the 1850s "the wild land" was depicted, with misleading embellishments, through the eyes of a few bold painters, most of European descent. Albert Bierstadt's romanticized landscapes of mid-west America developed from plein air sketches after which waterfalls, aboriginal figures and distortions of geography were added. The visual art of Bierstadt became a starting point for Monkman's own reportage of landscapes and indigenous portraits.
Crack the Sky presents three single-channel videos in a tipi that acts as re-education centre, meeting space and lodge for Monkman's performative two-spirited alter ego, Miss Chief Share Eagle Testicle. Monkman's alter ego in a loincloth and headdress satirizes and re-visions the early ethnographic profiles from a sexualized and authoritative indigenous perspective.