Monkman was born in 1965 in St Mary’s, Ontario, and today lives and works between New York City and Toronto. He is a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory, in Manitoba, Canada, and uses the language of European and North American art to reflect on Indigenous experiences. He addresses colonisation and its legacies, loss and memory, resistance and protest, and the disparities between Native American and settler colonial attitudes to gender and sexuality, among many other subjects.
Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree Nation), The Scream, 2017
© Kent Monkman
Monkman is often present in his work through his gender-fluid alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, a glamorous, supernatural, shapeshifting time-traveller. At once a witness, a trickster and an agent of change, Miss Chief is a key means for Monkman to subvert colonial perspectives, in challenging both the imagery of Old Master paintings and the construction of histories relating to Indigenous peoples. In the conversation, he describes Miss Chief’s role—“living inside” his paintings—reflects on the reimagining of queer narratives of the American fur trade, and discusses the historical and present reverence for gender-fluid or two-spirit people in Indigenous communities.
Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree Nation), The Deluge, 2019
Private collection, Canada. © and image courtesy of Kent Monkman
He reflects on the enduring impact of Eugène Delacroix’s painting and writing, the influence of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith on his political conviction, and the dramatic impact of seeing Antonio Gisbert Pérez’s painting The Execution of Torrijos and his Companions on the Beach at Málaga (1988) at the Prado in Madrid. He gives insight into the complex process of making his paintings and other aspects of his studio life.
Plus, he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree Nation), History is Painted by the Victors, 2013
© Kent Monkman
- Kent Monkman: History is Painted by the Victors, Denver Art Museum, Colorado, US, 20 April-17 August; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 27 September-8 March 2026
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture platform. Bloomberg Connects offers access to a vast range of international cultural organisations through a single click, with new guides being added regularly. They include a host of US museums and galleries that have shown and collected Kent Monkman’s work, including the Denver Art Museum, where he has a major exhibition beginning in April 2025, SITE Santa Fe in New Mexico, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where he had a major presentation in the Great Hall in 2019. The guide to the Met has features about the museum’s latest contemporary exhibitions, including its Rooftop Commission, with the Cincinnati-born artist Jennie Jones, and Facade Commission, featuring the work of the South Korean artist Lee Bul. It also has in-depth content on the show Monstrous Beauty: A Revision of Chinoiserie—with audio features on 20 of the works in the exhibition—and Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature, with discussions of 10 paintings and drawings across Friedrich’s career.
