Kent Monkman

"Kent Monkman: History is Painted by the Victors presents the renowned Canadian artist's most iconic works, which challenge the art history of settler cultures, reframe historical and contemporary Indigenous experiences, and explore themes of gender and sexuality, environmental protection, and the impact of governmental policies on historically marginalized communities. One of Canada's most renowned artists, Monkman challenges the art history of settler cultures that colonized and erased First Peoples from this continent's art history, but he does so by absorbing many influences from the canon of European and Euro-American painting to reframe historical, contemporary, and speculative future Indigenous experiences. Monkman takes inspiration from the artworks of numerous Western artists, including George Catlin and Albert Bierstadt, and from the Old Masters, such as Rembrandt van Rijn and Peter Paul Rubens. His monumental history paintings canonize Indigenous experiences and honor what Chippewa theorist Gerald Vizenor aptly describes as Indigenous survivance, at once the material and spiritual conditions of survival and resistance--in the futures seeded today, the present survived right now, and the pasts that coalesce in us all despite received grand narratives"--