Activity The Immoral Woman

In this video painting, Kent Monkman explores historical precedents and themes of First Nations peoples in Europe. Since the arrival of Europeans in the Americas, Indigenous peoples traveled to Europe as embassadors for their own people, captives, performers and as specimens for human zoos, popular in the 19th century. Both Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and George Catlin’s Gallery of the North American Indian featured Native American performers. Monkman constructs a back story for Miss Chief who began her own career as an artist and performer with her nemesis George Catlin before launching her own Taxonomy of the European Male. The Emergence of Legend photo series touches on this mythology.

The Immoral Woman

Video, 2015

A young cardinal is tempted by Miss Chief Eagle Testickle in St. Peter’s Square. Representing the plural sexuality and gender variance (two spirit traditions) of the Americas, Miss Chief tests the mores and hypocrisy of the Christian mantra – Let he who is without sin cast the first stone…Source painting: View of the Colonnade, St. Peter’s Square in Rome by C.W. Eckersberg (1813-16)