Portraits of (Un)settlement

Abstract

This essay considers the production of racialized masculinities in the contemporary artwork of the Singaporean-born queer diasporic artist Dominique Hui and the queer Aboriginal/Cree artist Kent Monkman. Recent debates in anti-racist feminist, queer, and Native feminist scholarship illuminate how diasporic and Indigenous groups are unevenly positioned within a framework of neoliberal multiculturalism and settler state colonialism in the Americas. Accordingly, there are important distinctions in the way that queer diasporic and queer Native artists respond to and challenge hetero- and homonormative models of citizenship in Canada. I examine how Hui's and Monkman's works reflect and mediate the interactions of multiple racialized masculinities in an identity-driven and individualized culture of neoliberalism and global consumer capitalism. Overall, I suggest that applying Native feminist critiques to a relational analysis of queer diasporic and Indigenous masculinities can unsettle and imagine new possibilities for “multicultural” solidarity in Canada—and beyond.