Canadian Cree Kent Monkman is a prolific artist whose lighthearted paintings, performance art, super-8 movies, antique tintypes, multimedia presentations, & mixed media installations poke fun at racist Hollywood depictions of First Nations people in art and movies. Monkman reverses the roles in the caricaturized cowboys-&-Indians scenario so that it is the ‘Indian’ whose insists on capturing ‘the European Male’ in images before he disappeared forever, as though they were peculiar scientific specimens.
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Monkman’s satirical work focuses scrutiny on cultural filters. To this purpose, he created a public performance persona (inspired by popstar Cher) of a very flamboyant drag queen. In her maribou and dyed feather war bonnet, beaded and open-toed stiletto mocassins, dreamcatcher bra/breastplate and Louis Vuitton quiver, Miss Chief swans over Monkman’s visual narratives that completely revise the traditional white view of North American history.
