PLAYING WITH THE VIRGIN: DUALITY AND IRONY IN KENT MONKMAN’S THE SCENT OF A BEAVER
Witty humour, power inversion and subversive sexuality all colour Kent Monkman’s avant-garde artworks. Situated within the Monkman’s second national touring solo exhibition, Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience, the sculptural installation, The Scent of the Beaver, continues to explore the complex interconnections between power, sexuality and historiography. This large, mix media installation occupies an impressive space of 60 inches, by 96 inches, by 96 inches. Fist launched at the Art Museum of the University of Toronto in January 2017, the exhibition is now on display at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.
The Canadian sesquicentennial inspired exhibit challenges the congratulatory mindset of those wishing to forget the past. The show is divided into nine sequential chapters which all reflect on Canada’s horrific relationship with its Indigenous community. Moving from present to past, the exhibition enacts and inversion of history. The surrounding works and artifacts only enrich the originally powerful context behind the artwork. As spoken by the artist, the exhibit articulates the “complexities of historic and contemporary indigenous experiences” while considering the “intergenerational trauma” as a result . While the subject matter is of the eighteenth century, the artwork reflects on issues vastly important today.
Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience, composed of restaged history paintings, installations, and drag performance, assertively engages a complex hybridity and duality that runs through the historical narratives and codes of representation that are redeployed by his art. Lead by Monkman’s gender bending, time traveling alter-ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, Shame and Prejudice sets out to reexamine Canada’s history from present day to confederation, and in doing so, re-constrcuts the story of Canada through the lens of First Nations people.
However, Monkman’s work is not simple act of reversal or re-writing. Pulling on the complexities of sexuality, gender, and desire, both the exhibition and the installation itself shed light on what has been erased or concealed in the historical ‘preservation’of aboriginal culture. Disjunction and hybridity are at the heart of Monkman’s work. As such, Monkman’s The Scent of the Beaver, demonstrates the fragility of binaries such as gay and straight, powerful and powerless, conquers and conquered. Monkman’s installation unleashes a ramifying series of reversals that deconstruct cultural assumptions on both sides of such polarities. Through borrowing and re-presenting the traditions of landscape painting in the canon of western art, he presents alternate outcomes of history while at the same time challenging oppressive contemporary binary ideas of sexuality and gender.
Monkman is a Canadian artist from Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is of mixed heritage, a member of the First River Band of the Cree First and of Irish descent. Throughout his childhood he lived on a number of northern Canadian reserves. From an early age, Monkman was exposed to both western creationist religious beliefs and Indigenous practices. His father, an evangelical preacher, adamantly taught Monkman, his family, and his community about the Christian religion. Hearing his father speak of Christ in the tongue of the Cree, he grew up with the belief that western culture was synonymous with that of the Indigenous peoples . For Monkman, the impact of Christianity on the churches of the First Nations would ultimately lead to a romantic link between an Indigenous lifestyle and western religion. As he grew and learnt about his ancestry, this would dramatically change. Most of the issues impacting his multimedia art are a direct result of Christianity and European influences upon the Indigenous community. Problems like colonized sexuality, horrific living conditions, homophobia, the imprint of residential schools, and limited and marginalized representation of First Nations within art history are all vital in creative progression of Monkman’s work.
To combat these injustices, the artist creates works with “a desire to look at history as it was written by Europeans, but to look at it through an Aboriginal lens” . As such, in the exhibition, Monkman inverts the colonial gaze.To this day, Monkman roams Canada while continuing to create provocative artworks that reactivate history.
In The Scent of the Beaver, Monkman continues to explore the influence of western culture on aboriginal identity and community by cleverly playing with western art cannon and inverting prominent western iconography. The Scent of a Beaver is based on the rococo masterpiece The Swing by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Through compositional elements this 1767 painting Fragonard utilizes themes of ambiguity, decadence and agency to construct a commentary of the transience of pleasures within eighteenth century court society.
To begin, Fragonard visually constructs a triangle by placing the three figures in opposing planes of the image. As such, the composition lends itself to the interpretation that these three figures are engaged in a love triangle, reinforcing the dichotomy between power and sexuality. The painting depicts the mistress of Baron de Saint-Julien hanging on a swing in a Rocco garden. The woman is positioned at the composition’s center, emphasizing her power and agency within the scene. She is being pushed by a man who is ignorant of a competing party hiding in the bushes. Aware of the other man, she flings her slipper to reveal her silk stocking to the man concealed in the shrubbery.
The sensual pleasure celebrated in the painting is further developed through the color and gesture used in the composition of the painting. The hushed, muted, and natural tones representing the lush, overgrown garden connote fertility and imply an erupting sexuality— close to climax—within the scene. Similarly, the swing is traditionally read as a sexual metaphor . The composition of The Swing directs the eye of the viewer slowly across the piece, following the motion of the swing from suiter to lover. The rhythm and movement of the piece coupled with the positioning of the woman’s body implies the sexual ambiguity of the female participant. However, the sense of movement achieved through the gesture of the brush strokes can also connote her movement within social society. At the time of the painting, women were excluded from traditional forms of power, such as land and wealth, due to rules of primogeniture. As such, this painting points to the subversive mechanisms of power available to women within court society—their beauty and their sexuality.
Looking to Fragonard’s The Swing, Monkman uses his two-spirted, beradache alter-ego Miss Chief Eagle Testicle to explore the dynamics between power and sexuality, along with consumerism and colonialism, within settler Canada. To do this, Monkman cleverly parallels visual elements within the composition of both pieces to allude to thematic similarities between the frivolity, opulence and moral ambiguity of the eighteenth century French court, and the political landscape of pre-colonial North America.
By reanimating Jean-Honore Fragonard’s The Swing, through paralleling its visual elements, Monkman’s The Scent of the Beaver enlarges The Swing’s themes of sexuality and moral duplicity within a pre-colonial context. Monkman beings by enlarging the painting into a three-dimensional life-size, mix media installation. The instillation dances between tableau and vivant, and alludes to Monkman’s large cannon of performance art. As such, the physical form of the piece sets up the ambiguous power and sexuality of the scene’s central figure.
In The Scent of the Beaver, Miss Chief Eagle Testicle –Monkman’s gender bending alter ego— occupies a position of power, dangling on a swing between British General Wolf and the French General Montcalm. In the composition of this piece, Miss Chief is on a higher visual plane than the two military men, who are situated on their knees, looking longingly up towards her. In this hieratic scaling, she is in the highest position in the scene. Her placement in the instillation instills emphasizes her power and sexuality within the scene. With an extended leg, she gives view up her skirt to the British General. On the swing she is at the end of forward motion— when the swing’s arc reaches climax— which insinuates both her loss of innocence and the birth of her sexual power.
In the reimagining of Frogonard’s painting, Monkman enlarges motifs of desire of within the North American political landscape of the eighteenth century to explore the complex power structures of the time. Similar to The Swing, Monkman’s The Sent of the Beaver is composed to direct the eye in such a way that the narrative is revealed gradually. Following the motion of the swing from one suiter to the other, the scene encourages the viewer to take pleasure in witnessing the scene of three parties vying for colonial and economic power, as it unfolds in romantic, intimate moment. Set against the more subdued tones of the background, and of Miss Chief herself, the stark high contrast colors of the generals’ uniforms carry a strong emotional charge, and compete against the visual emphasis of the compositions central figure, creating a sense of unity and visual cohesion. The equal distribution of visual emphasis represents the similar and equal power held by all parties. As such, The Scent of the Beaver does not depict a simple narrative of the conquered and the conquerors.
Monkman further engages with complex constructs of lust, power and sexuality through carefully utilizing formal visual elements. Desire, power and sexuality are never simple constructs within his work. To begin, Miss Chief’s dress emphasizes her liminal and ambiguous position between European and Aboriginal identities. Her decorative silk and fur gown is designed in natural, low intensity colors. As such, the use of local colors such as tan, cream, green and beige connote her connection with the North American landscape and her aboriginal heritage. Moreover, the garment’s beaver trimmings also emphasize her connection to nature and her aboriginal identity. Additionally, the dress is embroidered natural, rhythmic patterns. The rhythmic repetition of the floral decorative pattern of the garment parallel the natural patterns of the lush rose garden the she sits in. However, it is the natural pattern that pulls the viewers eye up the body of Miss Chief, and is continued by the vines of the swing, that points to the convergence of nature and consumerism. As such, Miss Chief is not simply a mechanism for inversion, and a representation for aboriginal power. Rather, she is a contradictory figure, equally tied to European influence and power structures.
Miss Chief rejects notions of purity, and the “virgin savage” enforced by painters such as George Catlin, by wearing European clothing. While it is made in neutral, low intensity tones, Miss Chief’s gown is made is made of opulent silk fabrics and is in a Rococo style, symbolizing her ambiguous connection to European power ststems. Donning a coiffure, piled high on her head, decorated with beads and feathers, Miss Chief is enacting a consumerist desire to present herself in European symbols of power and opulence. Thus, she is a participant in, and as such, upholds, consumerist power structures of settler North America.
Moreover, the instillation The Scent of the Beaver reflects on the complex dynamics of the fur trade. Through the figure of Miss Chief, Monkman’s work reflects the historic monopolization and destruction of resources within North America during the colonial period. As such, the fur-clad dress functions as a metaphor for the power relationships between the major players that shaped the social fabric, political structures, and economy of North America. Thus, while paying tribute to the slaughter of beavers brought on by the 18th century fur trade, the installation also recognizes the economic and political power that indigenous peoples gained by drawing on this resource.
In the instillation The Scent of the Beaver, Monkman works to combat simplistic narratives that populate conceptions precolonial interactions between European and Indigenous powers. The work explores the complex dualities of European and Indigenous economic and social interactions of the time.
To begin, In The Scent of the Beaver, Monkman seeks to re-write history by pointing out the flawed and contradictory premise of a virgin, untouched landscape that was perpetuated by nineteenth century painters. His instillation shatters the fragile narrative of a pure, romantic, untouched landscape. In doing so, Monkman effectively re-populates the scenes of eighteenth and ninetieth century landscape painters with an indigenous presence and re-asserts indigenous power within these landscapes.
Specifically, Monkman uses historic references to highlight meaning and context in his works. In The Scent of a Beaver, the artist simultaneously plays upon Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s 1767 Rocco masterpiece The Swing, and other historical paintings, such as Benjamin West’s 1770 oil on canvas, The Death of General Wol f. This ultimately situates the installation within a unique historical, political, and aesthetic context. In this clear play on The Swing, Monkman transplants connotations of opulence, frivolity and sexual deviance associated with the Rocco movement onto the authorized cannon of historical paintings incarnating the Seven Years War and their martyred French and English military heroes. The generals of the installation are not pure in their ambitions, and are imbued with a morally dubious motives. The General Wolf of the installation is not the same honorable hero of West’s paintings—rather he is corrupted by sexuality and power. Thus, by reinserting an Indigenous perspective into this classical landscape, Monkman is repopulating First Nations into an art historical context and cannon.
Monkman further continues to engage with themes of sexuality by referencing the enforcement of purity onto the North American landscape by painters such as Albert Bierstadt and George Catlin. By utilizing the same visual and contextual elements that artists in the Americas were known for, such as idealizing landscapes and depicting lavish scenery, Monkman’s work delivers critique on many levels. The mirroring the visual elements employed by these artist’s gestures towards the problematic Romanization of these artists. In his installation, the artist alludes to the historical paintings of artists such as Albert Bierstadt and George Catlin, which effectively erase indigenous society and presence from the North American landscapes which they painted. By nodding to the practice of easing and repressing narratives, Monkman in effect asserts aboriginal presence, sovereignty, vitality, and power. He also shows indigenous’ participation in the Seven Years War and pre-confederation Canada – a narrative which has largely been excluded from our official histories.
Additionally, in his instillation, Monkman alludes to a complicated history of colonized sexuality by employing the figure of Miss Chief in his work. Miss Chief is an artistic person in which Monkman can reverse the gaze, and is a figure that can look back on Europeans. She is part “modern commodity fetishist, part drag queen, part Aboriginal two-spirit or berdache, at once a dominatrix and a victim, male and female…a figure for the improbability of coherent identity” . As her name suggests Miss Chief does mischief on the social order, troubling the fictions of colonized sexuality, which exclude difference in gender and sexual expression. Within this instillation, the enforcers of a Judaeo-Christian understanding of sexuality and gender, the two Generals, look longingly up with homo-erotic desire at the transgender mischief maker. In this instillation the actors are under the influence of the carnivalesque.
The title of the instillation further plays on this sexual kitsch. The ainle glands of a beaver produce a vanilla scent . The reference of this scent production alludes to homo-erotic forms of pleasure. Moreover, the destabilization of western notions of binary sexuality, achieved through the through the sexual filtration between the Generals and Miss Chief, simultaneously destabilizes western understandings of the fur trade as simple interactions between oppressed and oppressors. Rather, it was a mutually pleasurable and beneficial experience for all parties.
In the instillation, Monkman points to the frailty of binaries. The week opposition Aboriginal and European is mirrored by the frail opposition between gay and straight, and conquered and conqueror. Instead of working towards a simple negation of his predecessors such as Albert Bierstadt and George Catlin, my making the aboriginal figure superior to the non-aboriginal ones, Monkman imbues his work with ambiguity. The players cannot simply be defined by their relation to power, money, gender and sexuality.
Moreover, by replicating contextual and pictorial components common among 19th century landscape artists and paralleling that with the romanticism of nineteenth century’ Rocco artists, Monkman is can create further meaning in his work. Specifically, visual concepts like portraying depth, romantic scenes and portraying plentiful landscapes are all referenced in various elements and materials in The Scent of the Beaver. Thus, the scenic landscape in Monkman’s painting is contrasted with the horrific undertones of resource depletion. Morover, his work elaborates upon the current hazards of sentimentalizing history. Ultimately, Monkman’s installation destabilizes the colonial landscapes depicted by artists such as Albert Bierstadt Paul Kane, and Fredrick Church and exclusionary histories they canonize. In doing so, Monkman reasserts the power Indigenous Nations had on the world stage in pre-colonial North America, reflecting the vitality of aboriginal communities today.