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Shame and Prejudice

A Story of Resilience — By Kent Monkman

Look Closer

Shame and Prejudice

A Story of Resilience — By Kent Monkman

Look Closer

Shame and Prejudice

A Story of Resilience — By Kent Monkman

Dates

August 6, 2020 – January 3, 2021

Kent Monkman’s Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience takes you on a journey through the past 150 years of Canada. It is a journey that reclaims and reinserts Indigenous voices into the collective memory of our country, challenging and shattering colonial ideas of our history.

The artist’s gender fluid, time-travelling alter-ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, is the narrator of this story, told through the lens of Indigenous resilience. Miss Chief leads us from New France and Confederation to the urban environment of Winnipeg’s North End and contemporary life on the reserve.

Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience provides a searing critique of Canada’s colonial policies, past and present, on the occasion of the recent sesquicentennial. As Monkman explains, “The last 150 years—the period of Modernity—represents the most devastating period for First Peoples, including the signing of the numbered treaties, the reserve system, genocidal policies of the residential schools, mass incarceration and urban squalor.”

This exhibition features nearly 80 pieces, including Monkman’s own paintings, installations and sculptures, in dialogue with historical artifacts loaned from museums and private collections across Canada. MOA is the final stop for this critically acclaimed travelling exhibition, which has been on a multi-year, cross-country tour to nine cities.

Kent Monkman is a Canadian artist of Cree ancestry who works with a variety of media, including painting, film/video, performance, and installation. His work is known for its provocative reinterpretations of Romantic North American landscapes, and it explores themes of colonization, sexuality, loss and resilience—the complexities of historic and contemporary Indigenous experience.

Note: Due to COVID-19, all museum visitors must pre-purchase a timed-entry ticket.

Book your ticket

Read MOA’s full visiting procedures


Read the exhibition booklet below (in Cree, English and French) or view here


Watch the remarks from the opening day of the exhibition below or view here

To honour and celebrate the exhibition, visitors heard remarks from Debra Sparrow; acclaimed Musqueam knowledge keeper and artist; Dr. Anthony Shelton, MOA Director; and Dr. Jennifer Kramer, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology and MOA Curatorial Liaison for Shame and Prejudice.


Watch MOA Curator Dr. Jennifer Kramer (Pacific Northwest) and Roberta Jamieson, President and CEO of Indspire in conversation with Kent Monkman on September 26 at a recent online MOA artist talk.


Watch Dr. June Scudeler (Métis), assistant professor in Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University, and Issaku Inami, MOA Volunteer Associate Internal Coordinator/President Elect and queer activist, discuss the queer Indigenous resilience, sexuality and eroticism in the exhibition in this special tour.


Watch MOA Curator Dr. Jennifer Kramer (Pacific Northwest) as you gives a virtual curatorial tour of the exhibition.

This exhibition was originally scheduled for May 8 – October 12, 2020. In response to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, this exhibition was postponed and rescheduled for August 6, 2020 – January 3, 2021.

This exhibition is produced by the Art Museum at the University of Toronto in partnership with the Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown, and has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council.
Lead Sponsor: Donald R. Sobey Foundation.
Photo credits: 1) Kent Monkman, The Daddies, 2016. Collection of Christine Armstrong and Irfhan Rawji. 2) Kent Monkman, The Scream, 2016. Collection of the Denver Art Museum, Native Arts acquisition fund. 3) Kent Monkman, The Massacre of the Innocents, 2015. Collection of John Bilton. 4) Kent Monkman, Nativity Scene, 2017. Gift of the Volunteer Committee to Museum London (1956-2017), in memory of Shelagh Martin-McLaren, 2017. 5) Kent Monkman, Le Petit dejeuner sur l’herbe, 2014. Peters Projects, Santa Fe, NM USA. 6) Kent Monkman, Reincarceration, 2013. Collection of Glenbow Museum.