Hallwalls Artist Talk: Kent Monkman

Hallwalls to Host Internationally Acclaimed Artist Kent Monkman

Artist’s work explores alternate cultural narratives

Buffalo – The University at Buffalo’s Department of Visual Studies, in partnership with New York City’s Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center presents internationally acclaimed Canadian artist Kent Monkman, who will speak at Hallwalls (341 Delaware Ave at Tupper) on February 28th at 6:00pm. The talk is part of the Leslie- Lohman Queer Art Lecture Series.

Monkman, who is of both Native American and European descent, works in a variety of media: film/video, painting, installations and performance. Operating at the intersection of colonial history and post-colonial culture, Monkman’s work not only calls into question our received histories but demonstrates that we are all necessarily hybrids, As Monkman once said, in a performance, “Alas, the face of the white man is changing. All traces of his former self are being altered through contact with the red man.”

Jonathan D. Katz, Director of the University at Buffalo’s Visual Studies PhD program, President of the Leslie-Lohman Museum, and curator of the series, commented on Monkman’s work: “To note that Kent Monkman is one of the most celebrated artists working in Canada today, or that he’s part Cree, part European, or that he’s queer and often performs in drag is unfortunately to fix what remains in his work always fluid. With a foot in each of our defining binaries, be they male/female, past/present, Aboriginal/European, Canadian/American - Monkman’s work underscores that contact always leaves both parties changed. And contact, even in the historical sense of that very fraught contact between the new world and the old, implies an erotics we have been too quick to deny.

”Monkman’s career spans more than two decades and his work has been extensively exhibited in Canada, the United States and Europe in both solo and group exhibitions including the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, The American West, at Compton Verney, in Warwickshire, England, the 2010 Sydney Biennale, My Winnipeg at Maison Rouge, Paris, and Oh Canada!, at MASS MOCA. His work is held in numerous private and public collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, Museum London, The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

Monkman’s appearance is co-sponsored by UB’s Department of Transnational Studies, which includes programs in Canadian Studies, Global Gender Studies, and Native American Studies; the UB Canadian-American Studies Committee; the UB Humanities Institute; the UB Haudenosaunee- Native American Studies Research Group; the UB Graduate Group in Queer Studies; UB Law School’s OUTLaw; and Gay and Lesbian Youth Services (GLYS) of Western New York.

The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art is the world’s first museum dedicated solely to providing a venue for multi-disciplinary work that engages gay and lesbian historical, social, or political issues still excluded from mainstream venues. The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art Queer Art Lecture Series is dedicated to queer art and artists, showcasing the most significant contemporary queer artists with an emphasis on exploring the relationship between their sexuality and their art. Each of the lectures in the series will also be presented at the Leslie-Lohman Museum located at 26 Wooster Street, NY, NY.

For more information on Kent Monkman please visit www.kentmonkman.com

www.visualstudies.buffalo.edu               www.leslielohman.org           www.hallwalls.org