The Artist as Postindian Warrior: Saviourism, Appropriation, and Care in the Art of Kent Monkman

Authors

  • Renate Dohmen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1344/%25x

Keywords:

Kent Monkman, third sex, Picassoesque figures, Primitivism, decolonizing Western canons of art, European settler colonialism, modernity/coloniality, Mignolo, Walsh, Rivera Cusicanqui, decoloniality, post-humanism, Postindian warrior

Abstract

This essay explores issues of saviourism, appropriation, and notions of care in the work of Cree painter, film maker, installation and performance artist Kent Monkman, one of Canada’s best-known contemporary artists, in relation to questions of indigenous epistemologies, (de)coloniality, and art history. It proposes that his creative, counter-colonial approach offers a radical new departure in the visual arts that fosters the paradigm of the artist as Postindian warrior, and that it charts a path towards a decolonial cultural praxis rooted in survivance, an indigenous, counter-colonial strategy aligned with the figure of the trickster.

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Published

2020-12-15

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2020): Epistemologías indígenas e imaginación artística

Section

Artículos

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