There is no Kent Monkman retrospective planned for the AGO next month. A virtual vernissage occasionally drifts by, but no popup galleries feature his work amongst red wine in paper cups, and the list of his upcoming exhibitions dwindles with every month of COVID-19 closures. This doesn’t mean the art world has forgotten the Cree Two-Spirited artist, as his pieces still sell steadily for five and six figures. Nor will it forget about him anytime soon. In the art world, provocation makes good business and, last spring, Monkman pissed a lot of people off.
The online release of Monkman’s 2020 painting Hanky Panky made headlines for its portrayal of Justin Trudeau in a seemingly compromised sexual position. Monkman places our handsome head of state in an Indigenous lodge—posed on all fours, pants around his ankles, a jar of Vaseline at hand. A cluster of (in)famous Canadian politicians look on, aghast, while a chorus of Indigenous women laugh and point along the perimeter of the scene.
Criticism came from a wide spectrum, spanning Twitter to The New Republic, as many Indigenous and non-Indigenous commentators felt a sacred space had been disrespected, sexual violence against women had been trivialized, and a colonial gaze had been reinforced.
To Rowan Red Sky, Hanky Panky is a “revenge rape fantasy” featuring Indigenous women painted to conform to gender and racial stereotypes. The Oneida art historian views the delight with which Monkman paints these subjects, who are witnessing apparent trauma being inflicted on someone else, as a mockery of the disproportionate rates of sexual violence that Indigenous women and transgender individuals face. Her criticism joins pre-existing commentaries criticizing Monkman for inadvertently recreating the colonial tropes he claims to be attempting to reverse.
To Regan de Loggans (Choctaw, Ki’Che and proud), Monkman allows settler institutions to brush off criticisms of under-representation under the guise of an imaginary shared history, neglecting to acknowledge that colonialism is not a wrongdoing of the past but a system of the present. Peacefully protesting the unveiling of two massive Monkman paintings at the Met in Manhattan, de Loggans described being tackled and detained by an undercover NYPD officer as chants of “you want our art, but not our people” echoed through the Great Hall and gift shop. Ironically, the painting behind her features military and police personnel waving guns at Monkman’s gender fluid (and fabulous) alter-ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle.
Sappony tribe member Nick Martin adds to the scrum, writing that Monkman wants us to venture outside our heteronormative comfort zones but doesn’t have anything profound to say when we get there. The paintings both “try too hard and not hard enough,” aspiring to provoke a White audience into viscerally feeling the trauma of being a woman and Indigenous in Canada, while neglecting to ask Canadian Indigenous women how they felt about it.
I think these criticisms should be understood in the context of broader societal inquiries about what makes art good and what we should ask from artists. Ultimately, Hanky Panky and the artist who painted it have much to offer the movement for reconciliation (already a fraught term), but can only do so if we embrace how uncomfortable they make us feel. With that being said, the accompanying list of caveats and acknowledgments might mean that ‘we’ and ‘us’ includes only law students with shaved heads, philosophy majors and European ancestors like me.
Hanky Panky suffers because the intentions of its subjects are not clear to much of its audience. Trudeau’s consent to the act he is about to receive is not sufficiently indicated by his grin, or the colour of the handkerchief in his back pocket. Monkman has referenced a code (ask a friend who practises BDSM, or maybe just Wikipedia) that is supposed to unequivocally signal Trudeau’s consent but, tucked into the back pocket and barely visible, is his little red hanky an afterthought or a well-coded hint? The Mountie splayed ass-out in the foreground fuels this ambiguity.
The role of the Indigenous women surrounding Trudeau, contagious laughter catching the light, was also unclear to many viewers. But it wasn’t unclear to everyone, as some Cree women pointed out that their aunties and grandmothers would never act in the manner portrayed. Whether they are understood as spiteful matriarchs celebrating violence, or, as Monkman proclaimed and later retracted, okihcitâwiskwêwak practicing an Indigenous legal order, the only thing certain about the canvas is that it has generated more controversy than conversation.
But to live, a work of art needs to possess a measure of ambiguity. Two or more forces pull the viewer in different directions, and in that space our faculties of imagination and understanding harmonize and collide freely. To me, Monkman’s manipulation of stereotypes lives because it simultaneously challenges what it reinforces. In his Nation to Nation, the Indigenous warrior receives oral sex from the Mountie. In 2018’s La Pieta, water protectors clash with riot police in classic Renaissance composition. Whether we look at Daniel Boone making love or the fathers of Confederation standing transfixed before the nude, two-spirited Miss Chief, we are forced to negotiate contradiction and confusion, and get a sense that truth is located somewhere between opposing cultural narratives.
Monkman is by no means the first artist to realize the power of appropriating stereotypes. In 1975, Robert Colescott reimagined George Washington crossing the Delaware to feature exclusively Sambo caricatures. Cindy Sherman’s self-portraits have consistently shown the independent and strong women behind stereotypical office girls, housewives, and bombshells. But Monkman bounds past these artists’ legacies to challenge stereotypes centered on individuals and groups he isn’t part of. In doing so, he contorts where he might gently suggest, and angers where he might engage.
Looking at Hanky Panky, I see a living and breathing commentary on representation—bodies twist and sexual organs shine in an irreverently free play between sacred and vulgar. Another viewer, perhaps someone who was abused in a residential school or whose nephews have to boil their drinking water, might see their sacred law being mocked for cheap thrills. That viewer and I owe each other understanding and compassion. Our contrasting reactions illustrate the complex mess of opinions, convictions, doubts and experiences that a creative artifact evokes. Our mutual respect depends on being able to talk about it.
And, regardless, while we sit before screens and breath behind masks, there is a queer Cree artist in Toronto busy at work on new paintings, installations, and provocations.
