Miss Chief’s Wet Dream, the largest work ever produced by artist Kent Monkman, was generously gifted to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia by the Donald R. Sobey Foundation as announced on the evening of October 12, 2018. In addition to its large scale, measuring 7.5 meters by 3.5 meters, this monumental canvas is the first work by Monkman to be centered around a maritime theme.
As curator Catherine Bédard writes:
A tribute to the fairy tale, French art and history painting, we will see Géricault’s renowned Raft of the Medusa steered off its Romantic course to enter into a collision with a canoe full of Indigenous people. With the help of his queer alter ego, the impressive Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, Monkman traverses the history of art and converses, freely and equal to equal, with the old “masters.”
Kent Monkman is a Canadian artist of Cree ancestry who works with a variety of mediums, including painting, film/video, performance, and installation. His work is known for its provocative reinterpretations of romantic North American landscapes and explores themes of colonization, sexuality, loss, and resilience – the complexities of historic and contemporary Indigenous experience.
Image: Kent Monkman, Miss Chief’s Wet Dream, 2018, acrylic on canvas 365.7 x 731.5 cm. Gift of Donald R. Sobey, 2018.
