unboxing the canon - Episode 2: Reversing the Gaze

Abstract

In this episode we examine contemporary Cree artist Kent Monkman's diptych mistikôsiwak on view now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The monumental paintings were completed in 2019 and are called Welcoming the Newcomers and Resurgence of the People.

In his words, Monkman aims to “reverse the gaze” from white settlers looking at Indigenous people to Indigenous people looking at settlers. Welcoming the Newcomers adapts figures and poses from a variety of works of art that depict the Indigenous people of Turtle Island from the point of view of white Europeans and settlers to present a different story and a different point of view about first contact. Resurgence of the People uses Emmanuel Leutze's 1851 Washington Crossing the Delaware as a source to picture contemporary immigration from Monkman's point of view.