Kent Monkman Reverses the Gaze in New Denver Art Museum Exhibit

About two weeks after I moved to the Mile High City, I went to the Denver Art Museum for the first time on a first date. Not realizing the DAM's vastness, we ended up spending seven hours there, wandering through the seemingly never-ending labyrinth of galleries and oddly shaped windows.

In the Indigenous Arts of North America collection, I looked over at my date (who, like me, uses they/them pronouns); to my bewilderment, they were in tears. Then I looked up at the painting they were viewing, and my stomach dropped. It was "The Scream" by Cree artist Kent Monkman, a looming piece that depicts Indigenous children being ripped from the arms of their wailing mothers by hard-faced soldiers and men and women in black robes, crucifixes swinging from their necks. The painting, like many of Monkman's other works, explores the horrors of forced assimilation and residential schools for Native people in North America.
I looked at hundreds upon hundreds of magnificent pieces of art that day, but "The Scream" was the one that has stayed branded in my mind. That's why three and a half years later, I was excited to learn that the museum would be displaying History is Painted by the Victors, the largest collection of Monkman's work ever shown in the United States, with 41 pieces depicting themes ranging from bodily violence by authority figures and loss to frolicking and love and compassion.

Monkman, who is based in New York City and Toronto, is widely popular in Canada — "We jokingly say he’s the second most famous artist after Celine Dion," says John Lukavic, Andrew W. Mellon curator of Native Arts at the DAM — but relatively unknown in the United States.

As I previewed the exhibit, this time I found myself holding back tears, and I couldn't even tell if they were tears of anger, grief, relief or joy. All of those emotions, I think; while horrific scenes of police brutality, violence and families being torn apart loomed over me, displays of queer joy, love and bodies across the gender spectrum existing without anyone judging or policing them also surrounded me.

"This exhibition is not a counterpoint to what’s going on in the world today," Lukavic says. "It’s a counterpoint to what’s been going on in the world for the past few hundred years. Many Indigenous communities had multiple forms of gender. Gender binaries did not exist in Turtle Island, North America, whatever you want to call it, until Judeo-Christian traditions and missionization came in. Kent is intentionally normalizing what has always been normal here in this place."

Three paintings from Monkman's Rendezvous series, "Wild Flowers of North America," "Saturnalia" and "Bacchanal," show queer bodies living life — chatting, eating, playing instruments and just existing. "In the spring, all the fur trappers and Indigenous people would come together to celebrate the beginning of spring, and they would trade and play games," says senior interpretive specialist Danielle Stephens. "This was Kent’s iteration. Rendezvous have been documented by other artists, but it was his version of what might have been going on."
"Also, there are historical accounts of same-sex relationships that would happen in the West, in the mountains, away from the puritanical views of eastern cities," Lukavic adds. "There were multiple forms of gender expression and love that were happening freely, because there was no threat of anything."

Expressions of sexuality and gender aren't limited to just The Rendezvous paintings. They're all over the exhibit with Monkman's high-heeled alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, the focal point of a majority of the works.

Miss Chief is a celestial being, time traveler, philanthropist, shape-shifter and two-spirit individual who infuses herself into art history and landscapes. She was partially inspired by George Catlin, an artist who traveled into the West in the 1830s and '40s and painted a lot of Indigenous subjects. "Catlin, among others, were famous for painting themselves into their own artwork, which Kent found egotistical," Lukavic says. "There's this sense that they had this unearned power to tell these Indigenous stories."

Miss Chief can be seen throughout the exhibit in stilettos, pink loincloth flowing in the wind, head held high, intertwined and running from a storm with a soldier, primly painting a cowboy tied to a tree trunk, standing amid large groups of people. I'm kind of in love with her.
"I wanted a character who could live inside my work and reverse the gaze," Monkman explains at the exhibit's media preview. "Catlin was looking at Indigenous subjects. I wanted a character that could reverse the gaze and look back and make her own observations about the settlers that she was encountering."

Monkman was also thinking about Indigenous sexuality and gender identity. "We didn't have a problem with gender fluid people," he says. "We had different forms of sexuality. I wanted to create a persona that was a representation of that empowered way of thinking about sexuality."

Nude bodies appear frequently in the exhibit, often touching and holding each other, but that doesn't necessarily mean the paintings are sexual. "Kent talks about decolonizing or even indigenizing sexuality," Lukavic says. "There's nothing inherently wrong with or sexual about the body. It's really the lenses that people are looking through that are often subconscious. They're reacting to something but aren't necessarily questioning internally why they're having that reaction."

Lukavic says that he and Stephens conducted many focus groups and conversations with constituents to understand what the museum's responsibilities are when addressing the themes painted onto Monkman's canvases. "One of the things that really came to the foreground was that with one thing that one person might feel offended by, another person is going to feel valued, seen, heard, respected and celebrated," Lukavic notes. "We had to be careful in the way we presented things, because we didn't want to address something as abnormal, because that would diminish the life experience of someone who is supported by that."

An alphabetical list of themes is painted on the wall outside the gallery, with a nudity warning for parents. "Kent was thrilled, because it's really just putting the onus on the people, we're not putting any value judgment on it whatsoever," Lukavic says. 

Those who make it inside the gallery should buckle up for a rollercoaster ride of emotions as they view works depicting the impact of governmental policies, residential and boarding schools, specific historic events, the mass institutionalizing and incarceration of Indigenous people, forced urbanization and Indigenous action. You'll be wiping tears from your eyes after viewing one painting, only to turn around and burst out laughing at another.

You might also feel drawn in and swallowed by the artwork, not only because of its vibrant colors and active and expressive depictions, but because the paintings are huge. The largest at 12 feet high and 24 feet wide, "Miss Chief's Wet Dream," takes up a whole wall; two paintings that Monkman did in 2019 for the Met's first Great Hall Commission, "Welcoming the Newcomers" and "Resurgence of the People," are each 11 feet high and 22 feet wide.

Like my experience with "The Scream," the paintings will probably work their way into your mind and stay there. This is intentional. Monkman takes inspiration from Western European and American art history for style and subjects. Even if you don't know a lot about art history, there is something familiar about his paintings.

"Those visual images stick with you," Stephens says. "He’s basically reauthoring those memories or images that we might already have in our minds from looking through our history books or movies. So if you’re like, 'I’ve seen this somewhere before, but it’s so different now,' it's because it’s a new story being told."
As you round the corner to the end of the exhibit, you'll be met by "The Great Mystery," which shows Miss Chief on horseback with her shoulders raised in a shrug. She seems to be saying, "So that happened. What now?"

“We don’t want visitors to leave with a burden on their shoulders; we want them to feel empowered that they now have these holes in their own knowledge filled in a new way to recognize how many more holes there are to fill and how it truly requires all of us coming together to work together to build a future that we need to exist," Lukavic says.

There's no doubt that today's politics in the U.S. are pretty hostile toward anyone who isn't wealthy, White and a cisgender man. But Monkman hopes his art will transcend the time we're in.

"The whole point of these works is to send a message into the future and that people will read these paintings years and years from now and take something away from it," Monkman says. "It's a big moment for me to be able to have this kind of exposure here. There are so many similarities to Indigenous experiences in Canada and in the U.S. that I think a lot of these themes will register and resonate with people here." 

Kent Monkman: History Is Painted by the Victors opens Sunday, April 20, and runs through August 17 at the Denver Art Museum, 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway. The exhibit is included in general admission.