Kent Monkman
PROJECT
Cree artist Kent Monkman has invented a queer, gender-fluid, time-travelling alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. Throughout Monkman’s works, Miss Chief is both an agent provocateur and a witness to the destruction of the social, cultural and religious heritage of Turtle Island – the name used by many Indigenous peoples for North America – across centuries of colonisation. Here the Cree trickster spirit Wîsahkêcâhk directs Miss Chief towards a group of elders, depicted as pink-robed pterodactyls. The work reminds us that the First Peoples of Turtle Island hold knowledge of antediluvian and evolutionary histories that long predate the arrival of Europeans.
ABOUT
Kent Monkman is an interdisciplinary Cree artist and a member of ocêkw-sîpiy (Fisher River Cree Nation) in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba, Canada). In 2025–26, Monkman’s first international large-scale solo exhibition, History is Painted by the Victors, toured to the Denver Art Museum (US), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Canada), and Akron Art Museum, Ohio (US). Monkman was the inaugural contemporary artist selected for The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Great Hall Commission and his work is held in the collections of museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (US); the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC (US); Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Canada); the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (Canada); Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (Australia); and macLYON, Lyon (France).