Artists: Kent Monkman
Title: Dance to Mischief
Dates: August 14 to September 28, 2019
Opening Reception: Wednesday, August 14 at 6pm
Location: Urban Shaman Santa Fe Satellite Gallery, Santa Fe New Mexico;
Vital Spaces at 220 Otero Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Artist Statement
Move over J.Lo and Cher! Miss Chief Eagle Testickle has a new sexy video of her club track: Dance to Miss Chief – a playful critique of German fascination with North American “Indians” that is guaranteed to make you want to get up and shake your booty! This remix of contemporary and vintage footage celebrates Miss Chief’s on-screen romance with leading man, Winnetou, fictitious “Indian” from Karl May’s German Westerns.
Biographies
Kent Monkman, born in Canada in 1965, is a Cree artist who is widely known for his provocative interventions into Western European and American art history. He explores themes of colonization, sexuality, loss, and resilience—the complexities of historic and contemporary Indigenous experiences—across a variety of mediums, including painting, film/video, performance, and installation. Monkman’s gender-fluid alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle often appears in his work as a time-traveling, shape-shifting, supernatural being who reverses the colonial gaze to challenge received notions of history and Indigenous peoples.
With Miss Chief at center stage, Monkman has created site-specific performances at the Royal Ontario Museum, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Compton Verney, and the Denver Art Museum. His painting and installation works have been exhibited at numerous institutions including the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Montréal; the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; the Art Gallery of Ontario; the National Gallery of Canada; the Des Moines Art Centre; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art; the Musée d’art contemporain de Rochechouart, France; the Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, France; Maison Rouge, Paris; and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Monkman’s second nationally touring solo exhibition, Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience, will visit nine museums across Canada until 2020.
Monkman’s award-winning short film and video works have been screened at various international festivals including the 2007 and 2008 Berlinale and the 2007 and 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. Many of his media works are made with his longtime collaborator, Gisèle Gordon. Monkman has been awarded the Indspire Award (2014), the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award (2014), the Bonham Centre Award (2017), an honorary doctorate degree from OCAD University (2017), and the Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts (2017).
Special thanks to Amber Dawn Bear Robe (Urban staff alumni and friend) for helping with this event and Vital Spaces.
Urban Shaman: Contemporary Aboriginal Art Gallery acknowledges the support, throughout the year, of our friends, volunteers, community and all our relations, NCI FM, the Winnipeg Arts Council, the Manitoba Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts. ~Miigwetch/ Hai Hai/ Ekosi / Merci/ Thank you
