Inverted assails: performance and politics in the art of Kent Monkman/Mischief

Abstract

Between 2007 and 2008, was exhibited at the National Museum of the American Indian, the exhibition "Remix: New Modernities in a Post-Indian World," composed of 15 indigenous artists mestizos, who through their work problematized the boundaries of authenticity, indianidades of contemporary creativity and the sense of asserting themselves Indians today. Black Indians, Native Gay, dilemmas of cyberculture, among other images were present in the remixes "post-Indian", who experienced new meanings about body, gender, ethnicity, territoriality and transitorialidade. The aim of this paper is to discuss the production of Kent Monkman, gay, Cree descent from this exhibition to date. Through the character-drag queen half-breed Miss Chief, inspired by the singer Cher, and incorporated in his paintings, photographs and video art, Monkman has given performances reinventing the nineteenth century romantic imagery that forms the "noble savage" in sublime landscapes, questioning stereotypes of sexuality in the European conquest and exploring relationships with xenophobia and imperialism. Criticized as "erotic genocide", the "trickster" says aims to reverse sex roles and powers to the expansion of indigenous traditional reflection on the "third gender" in the worlds indigenous Americans. Evoking the "two-spirited", criticizing the ultra-macho mythology of indigenous to highlight the "perversions" between Indians and whites, Monkman ask: who "moves" who?