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Being Legendary at Royal Ontario Museum: Confronting Colonialism, Rethinking History

By Kent Monkman

Being Legendary presents a new and never-before-published body of work by internationally renowned Cree artist Kent Monkman. Provocative and groundbreaking, Monkman focuses on two of the most urgent topics in today’s cultural world by posing the following questions: How do we revisit and re-think the dominant version of history and natural science embedded in colonial institutions to incorporate the foundations of Indigenous knowledge? How can museums stay relevant in the twenty-first century?

With this daring oeuvre of painting and sculpture accompanied by poignant written commentary from leading Indigenous thinkers, Monkman shares an unprecedented worldview—one that takes his audience on an epic journey from time immemorial to the present. Through his shape-shifting, time-travelling, genderfluid alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, Monkman amplifies the voices of Cree knowledge keepers and challenges perceptions of Indigenous peoples by exploring the science and knowledge embedded in Indigenous stories. Bold, evocative, and prescient, Being Legendary will change the conversation about our understanding of both art and history.

Kent Monkman (b.1965) is an interdisciplinary Cree visual artist. A member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba), he lives and works in Dish With One Spoon Territory (Toronto). Known for his thought-provoking interventions into Western European and American art history, Monkman explores themes of colonization, sexuality, loss, and resilience in his art. Monkman’s gender-fluid alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle often appears in his work as a time-travelling, shape-shifting, supernatural being who reverses the colonial gaze to challenge received notions of history. Monkman’s work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the National Gallery of Canada.

$60

ISBN 978-1487102937

Hardcover | 9.5 x 11.875 | 175 pp

– Essays and reflections from leading Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers

– Dozens of previously unpublished paintings

– Over a hundred full-colour illustrations

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