Abstract

Canadian Indigenous multidisciplinary artist Kent Monkman’s work has inspired many scholars to write on contemporary art as an indicator of socio-historical politics pertaining to Indigenous identities, postcolonial atrocities, and queer sexualities. Despite this rather large and emerging field of what I like to call “Monkman studies,” there is a constant avoidance among scholars to discuss how the works themselves instigate conversations around sexuality and race, how their chosen forms of media play a part in this process, and what it means that they exist in and as a network. Up and Coming is a necessary inclusion within Monkman studies that moves with the works as a way to understand how their specific forms of media play a part in the process of politics. This is not an intervention or rerouting of what should be said on Monkman’s work, but rather, a thesis that contributes to the socio-historical complexities of the world he has designed for his artist avatar Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. This is achieved by first closely examining the media used to fabricate Miss Chief’s universe. After establishing Miss Chief as a transmedia figure, I consult media archaeology (through porno-archaeology) in the formation of Monkman’s aesthetic—opening Miss Chief’s world beyond the artist’s oeuvre and into a much larger matrix of relationality and meaning. Monkman screens his films inside museum installations, structures that remix traditional nomadic Indigenous shelters with spaces of cinematic exhibition. Since Miss Chief is part of these films, and the installations double as her boudoirs, I argue that they are architectural nodes that allow viewers to enter the space of her network. Through theories of architectural space, erotic desire as a process of creation, and media archaeology, I place Monkman’s work within a system of knowledge that understands the network as spatialised and necessary in the mediation of Indigenous traditions of storytelling and healing.