University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Kent 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.” Monkman is one of the most celebrated artists working in Canada today. 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. Presented by: the UB Department of Visual Studies; the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art; and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center Co-Sponsored by: UB’s Department of Transnational Studies; the UB Canadian-American Studies Committee; UB Law School’s OUTLaw; and Gay and Lesbian Youth Services (GLYS) of Western New York. www.kentmonkman.com