Miss America (detail)
2012
acrylic on canvas
84″ x 132

Pierre-François Ouellette Art Contemporain is pleased to present a solo exhibition of Kent Monkman at Centre Space in Toronto. This exhibition entitled Miss America will focus on three recent paintings (Miss America, Flow and Descent into Amnesia) and some videos including Dance to Miss Chief. The exhibition opens to the public on Thursday June 14th and run until August 11th.

“I pillage the history of painting, from the Baroque era to Romanticism, to investigate and challenge the subjectivity of the European eye on Aboriginal peoples and the ‘New World'”

…Kent Monkman

Kent Monkman has established himself as one of the most exciting and dynamic contemporary artists inCanada. For Monkman, history is not a static, repressive regime of misleading stereotypes and tired art historical tropes, it is a lithe medium ripe for re-imagining and re-population.

In “Miss America”, Monkman has chosen as his inspiration Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

His reworking of Tiepolo’s ceiling cycle The Four Continents (1754), specifically America at Treppenhaus, Residenz at Würzburg, Germany, challenges the euro- western ‘Age of Reason’ through a re-casting of allegory and classism into a Canadian Indigenous context. Tiepolo’s cycle, epitomized, not only the lush allegorical language of Renaissance and Baroque conceptualizations of the world, but also the humanist philosophies that characterize the Enlightenment – the aesthetics of Classical Antiquity coupled with the search for imperial truth through reason to bring order from chaos. Likewise, Monkman, in appropriating these compositional, syntactic and iconographical tools, piles luscious fully-fleshed Indigenous and Non-Indigenous bodies into a climax of theAmericas that simultaneously assert and undermine the ‘rationalism’ of the Age.

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On Saturday June 9, 2012, charles c. smith made a presentation to the CARFAC National Conference entitled The Changing Face of the Arts In Canada and Income/Labour Disparities.  This presentation was a contribution to CARFAC’s Art and Law conference (http://www.carfac.ca/).  charles’ presentation covered such topics as the history of discrimination in Canadian society and in the arts, demographic changes both current and projected for Aboriginal and racialized peoples, the labour and income disparities facing these artists and the rates of engagement of these communities in the arts. 

Below is charles’ full text and PowerPoint presentation:

 The Mississauga Arts Council (MAC) is pleased to introduce the Contemporary Jamaican Art Exhibit, circa1962 I circa2012, launching at the Art Gallery of Mississauga (300 City Centre Dr) on July 12, 2012 at 6 p.m. Admission is free. There will also be a bus from The Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen St. W., Toronto) at 6 p.m. to the Reception. Bus returns at 8 p.m. Award-winning multidisciplinary artist Peter Chin will be performing at the reception. Born in Kingston, Jamaica and based in Toronto, Chin is a musician/composer, dancer/choreographer, performance artist, designer and director. There will be a series of events scheduled every day throughout the summer, culminating on September 8, 2012. Produced by the Art Gallery of Mississauga,in collaboration with the Jamaica 50 Anniversary Committee and the Mississauga Arts Council, this event celebrates 50 years of Jamaica’s Independence and their contribution to Canada through people, arts, culture and heritage. On August 6, 1962, Jamaica became a nation and officially received its Independence from Britain. It is with an immense amount of pride that the Jamaican Diaspora in Canada joins with the island nation in celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Independence. Under the Patronage of the Jamaican High Commissioner, Her Excellency, Sheila Sealy Monteith and Jamaican Consul General to Toronto, Seth George Ramoco with the Jamaica 50 Committee will unveil a summer of events in the areas of Art, Literature, Dance and Theatre, which will celebrate the island’s vibrant cultural heritage.

Above: Barrington Watson, Washer Women (1966), oil on canvas, 71 x 101 cm, NGJ Collection Continue reading →