X-TRA
"Licking the Sublime” with Matt Siegle. April 1, 2024.
"That’s why I have so much belief in painting and in the power of painting. The humanity of it…”
The Believer
”The Process: Kent Monkman, They Knew Everything They Needed to Live” by Alessandro Tersigni. April 3, 2024
“Monkman… and his historical, often fantastical paintings stand alone in the art world.”
Hyperallergic
"A True and Exact History of Queer Indigenous Sovereignty" by Joseph M. Pierce. March 11, 2024.
"Here, Monkman’s background in representational art finds seamless expression in writing.”
Artnet News
“A Fantastical Cree Spirit From the Mind of Artist Kent Monkman Writes Her Memoirs" by Katie White. January 31, 2024.
“A dizzying and oftentimes delightful narrative…”
CBC Sunday Magazine
"Artist Kent Monkman gives his gender-fluid alter ego an origin story" with Piya Chattopadhyay. November 12, 2023.
Boston Globe
"The fine art of remaking a collection" by Murray Whyte. October 20, 2023.
"If the Rothko is as close to sacred as American art gets, Monkman is clearly, intentionally profane.”
The Globe and Mail
"Kent Monkman shows us how to confront Indigenous erasure” by Tanya Talaga. October 20, 2022.
"What Mr. Monkman has created at the ROM is bigger than a mere exhibit. It shows a constant, lived reality.”
Q on CBC
"Kent Monkman is challenging the way museums tell Indigenous stories" with Tom Power. October 13, 2022.
"I guess it's a way of helping my child self in the future.”
The Art Newspaper
"Kent Monkman: the trickster poking fun at the art historical canon" by Louisa Buck. October 7, 2022.
"I’ve reversed the gaze and now I’m saying, okay, now this is us looking at you.”
Maclean’s
“How Kent Monkman’s alter ego is challenging colonial history" by Kate Boutsalis. October 5, 2022.
"It’s hopeful to see these figures and ideas immortalized in art.”
Toronto Life
"Strokes of Genius” by Mathew Silver. October 5, 2022.
"Whether Monkman believes it or not, he’s cemented his place in art world superstardom.”
The Globe and Mail
”Kent Monkman: A Day in the Studio” by Ben Mussett. September 23, 2022.
"Let’s build monuments to our own people instead.”
T: The New York Times Style Magazine
"The Queer Indigenous Artists Reclaiming a Fluid Sense of Gender" by Ligaya Mishan. February 17, 2022.
BBC Culture
"Kent Monkman’s The Scream: Images That Define Atrocities” by Karen Burshtein. January 7, 2021.
"The Scream is one example of how, throughout history, artists' works have been used as tools of change.”
The Art Newspaper
The Big Review by Tim Barringer. February 6, 2020.
"The latest commission for the Met's Great Hall continues the New York institution's upending of the colonial-settler narrative of American history.”
Art Newspaper Podcast
Maggie Carrigan. January 31, 2020.
Artnet
“Cree Artist Kent Monkman Takes Us on a Tour of the Met to Show How Not to Depict Indigenous People” by Sarah Cascone. January 2, 2020.
Border Crossings
”Futuring the Past: Kent Monkman Reconfigures The Met” by Joseph R. Wolin. March 2020.
”Monkman’s commission for the Metropolitan Museum represents a bold and vibrant act of revision—of history, of art history, of futurism, of cultural stereotypes and expectations, of race, gender and, most importantly, of hope.”
The New York Times
”A Cree Artist Redraws History” by Holland Cotter, December 19, 2019
”With humor and fantasy, Kent Monkman disrupts clichés of Native victimhood at the Met”
Macleans
Paul Wells. “Kent Monkman’s big entrance.” December 19, 2019.
The Globe and Mail
”At the Met, Cree Artist Kent Monkman Asks Visitors to Confront North America’s Colonial Past” by Kate Taylor, December 18, 2019
”Monkman beats Western history painting at its own game.”
New York Magazine | Vulture
The Canadian Cree Artist Remixing History in the Met’s Great Hall by Jarrett Earnest, September 2019
“Isn’t a time-traveling, gender-fluid, Indigenous sex goddess exactly what art needs right about now?”
Hyperallergic / Art Movements Podcast
Kent Monkman’s Mission to Decenter the Colonial Museum by Hrag Vartanian, July 2019
"Leading contemporary artist Kent Monkman discusses how museums have influenced his life and his art, and what he is doing to help change them to tell a fuller picture of Canadian history.”
CBC Radio, Ideas with Paul Kennedy
Kent Monkman: Decolonizing Art History, February 2019
“I needed my own artistic persona that could live inside the work. I wanted a persona that represented empowered Indigenous sexuality. That is why Miss Chief was created.”
The Globe and Mail
"The Modern Touch of an Old Master" by Dakshana Bascaramurty, December 2017
"Kent Monkman is about as famous as a living painter can be in this country. Dakshana Bascaramurty gets a peek at the process behind his art."
Waterloo Chronicle
"Monkman's Four Continents to spark conversation about culture during Canada's 150" by Bob Vrbanac, January 2017
The Globe and Mail
"Kent Monkman: A trickster with a cause crashes Canada’s 150th birthday party" by Robert Everett-Green, January 2017
"Subverting the style of painting’s Old Masters and the founding narratives of Confederation, a Cree artist and his alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, are challenging colonial national myths in a new exhibit."
The Toronto Star
"Truth, resilience and indigenous art find their place in 2016" by Murray Whyte, December 2016
"Monkman makes an elegant, powerful point about land, culture, ownership and history at perhaps the most extraordinary moment for such things in this country."
Artsy
"Kent Monkman Paints Clashing Cultures in 'Failure of Modernity'" by Bridget Gleeson, January 2016
"A searing commentary on the commodification of Native American culture in a modern world."
Pasatiempo
"Modern mashups: artwork by Kent Monkman" by Michael Abatemarco, January 2016
Ottawa Citizen
"Kent Monkman's buffalo jump is a wry tour de force" by Peter Simpson, October 2015
"It is all quintessentially Monkman - dexterous in its execution, both accessible and profound, both funny and sad... I walked out of the room and asked myself, is there a more compelling artist in Canada today?"
The Globe and Mail
"Kent Monkman's latest documents North American bison slaughter in 3-D" by James Adams, October 2015
"With Rise and Fall, Monkman as an aboriginal artist niftily reappropriates into three dimensions the two-dimensional appropriation Picasso enacted for the greater glory of 20th-century Modernisim... Viewers will find their minds a-swirl in a cross-fire hurricane of associations and allusions."
The Toronto Star
"Kent Monkman: Revisionist history, spiked heels and all" by Murray Whyte, February 2015
"Monkman's skill is as much as a critic as a painter. He uses humour and gleeful camp as a Trojan Horse of sorts to communicate the very real dissent at the core of his project: about the shameful historical treatment of Canadian aboriginals by British and French colonizers, and the bedrock of the same inequities today."
Hyperallergic
"The Violent History of Kent Monkman" by Hrag Vartanian, June 2014
"In Kent Monkman's first New York solo show, art history commingles with cultural mythology in a passion play about masculinity and belonging."
Huffington Post
"Kent Monkman, Aka Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, Confronts Native American Myths" by Katherine Brooks, May 2014
"In an effort to harken back to visuals of the past, Monkman creates his own technique and his own aesthetic, that speaks personally and universally to the misconceptions of colonization and the very real experiences of so-called disappearing people."
The Walrus
"Historic Drag, Kent Monkman's new show redresses colonial art" by Sarah Milroy, May 2014
"Modernity espoused a wilful amnesia about the past."
The Wall Street Journal
"Artifacts to Artworks" by Lee Rosenbaum, January 2012
"This heavy-handed, jejune exercise in score-settling... is a jarring start to a thought provoking show."
The Boston Globe
"Two Museums show Native American Art, then and now" by Sebastian Smee, February 2012
"'Théâtre de Cristal'... gets the show off to a spectacular start."
"Toe-curling, humorous, and flat-out depressing"
The Phoenix
"The Peabody Essex explores Native America" by Greg Cook, April 2012
"The Cree artist plays his drag show for laughs, but underlying it are serious questions about white genocide of Native American Societies."
In Toronto
"At Play in the Unified Fields of History" by Sholem Krishtalka, July 2012
"The camp and the visual verve is rooted in a kind of seriousness, an attention to multiple vantage points of history, some forgotten, some indelibly imprinted in our visual memories."
The Globe and Mail
"Kent Monkman: Honouring the dispossessed" by Sarah Milroy, October 2012
"There's a knife twist, then, at the heart of Monkman's metaphor: A metaphor drawn from a Christian story is used to eulogize a way of like that Christianity unravelled."
Winnipeg Free Press
"Mythmaking in The Margins" by Steven Leyden Cochrane, November 2012
"Here, as in all his best work, Monkman walks a razor's edge between sneering camp and mournful beauty, all the while bristling with scarcely disguised rage."
Toronto Life
"The Pink Indian" by Gerais Hannon, September 2011
"If our Metis nation needs a millenial symbol we could do worse than this: a half-breed in a feathered headdress, wearing hot pink platform heels."
Times Colonist
"Trickster in Drag Upends Colonial View" by Robert Amos, June 2010
"S/he does it again and again, grabbing hot-button issues, important and unresolved -- colonialism, sexuality, the meaning of art -- and shuffles them adroitly."
Canadian Art
Review of show at the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art by Ashley Johnson, Spring 2008
"The sense of fun in this exhibition is palpable, and it also poses the serious question of what is natural and valuable in human nature. Monkman is brilliant."
The Guardian
"Exhibition Preview" by Jessica Lack, September 2008
"Funny and politically incisive, his injection of some Cher-like glamour into the heart of America's butch psyche is like throwing a Versace wedge into an auto-repair shop."
Winnipeg Free Press
Review of show at the Urban Shaman Gallery, Winnipeg by Stacey Abramson, 2008
"This exhibition is characterized by honesty and weight, rethinking history while maintaining the highest level of artistic expression."
Ottawa Citizen
"Aboriginal Art with Attitude" by Paul Gessel, July 2007
"Monkman's work is a breath of fresh air blowing through the world of aboriginal art."
Xtra! Magazine
"Camp Magic" by Sholem Krishtalka, June 2007
"...personal resonance is the spark of his encyclopedic revisionist project, and one that Monkman hopskotches through with all the ease of a kid at play."
Maclean's
"Landscape with Sexy Transvestite" by Jordan Timm, December 2007
"Miss Chief has so far proven an able tour guide for Monkman's alternate narratives of cultural oppression. She's helped set Monkman's star on the rise in the art world."
Royal Ontario Museum
Interview with the artist, by Kelvin Browne, Winter 2007
"[My work} is a re-imagining of the past that questions the basis for many of our beliefs today."
Fuse Magazine
"Kent Monkman's Postindian Diva Warrior" by David McIntosh, Volume 29, Number 3, July 2008
"Monkman Reaches [deep] into the palimpsest play of representational histories, into the dusty image core of the tropes of power."
Interview Magazine
Interview with the artist by David Furnish, March 2006
"...when I make these paintings I'm not necessarily re-painting history, but I'm nudging people toward seeing that there are these big missing narratives."
Canadian Art
"Kent Monkman: Miss Chief's Return" by David Liss, Fall 2005
"Liberated from the constraints of accepted dogma... Monkman feels perfectly free and justified in playing out his fantasies across the theatre of history."
iD Magazine
Review of show at Compton Verney, Warwickshire, UK, by Jessica Lack, October 2005
"[Monkman's show is] a thrilling combination that is both artfully inventive and unsettling in its revisionism."
Toronto Star
"Dare We Reinterpret the Group of Seven?" by Murray Whyte June, 2005
"[Monkman offers] cheeky recreations of several of Harris' pieces in watercolour, overlaid with text, and an addition or two - a cowboy and Indian, say, in a particular kind of romantic entanglement."
C Magazine
"The Unreadable Present: Nadia Myre and Kent Monkman" by Richard William Hill, September 2002
"[Monkman's] surfaces are highly complex, built from many layers of paint of varying degrees of transparency."
