Redistancing Romanticism: Kent Monkman, Indigenous Perspectives, and the Art of History

Abstract

Abstract: Over the last decade, Cree visual and performance artist Kent Monkman has undertaken an innovative and searching exploration of Romantic painting. Yet, the centrality of Romanticism in his oeuvre has hitherto been misunderstood. Drawing on the resources of Romantic historiography, he modulates historical distance—sympathetic proximity and cerebral distanciation—not only to "redistance" history to meet contemporary needs, but to complicate the movements of identification and alienation. Monkman's work may be ironic, but his is a strangely compassionate irony in which the relationship between European and non-Indigenous peoples is framed with a delicate hope for sincere reconciliation.