ACCA is delighted to present Kent Monkman: Miss Chief’s picture show, the first solo exhibition in Australia by celebrated Two-Spirit Cree and Irish Canadian artist Kent Monkman.
Monkman is an internationally acclaimed interdisciplinary artist whose work spans painting, film, video, performance, and installation. His practice powerfully engages with themes of colonisation, sexuality, truth-telling, and resilience. This landmark exhibition includes the global premiere of new work, including a live performance, alongside a survey of Monkman’s expansive video and performance practice traversing more than three decades.
Miss Chief’s picture show introduces Australian audiences to the signature hallmarks of Monkman’s work – richly layered, frequently satirical, and deeply political. Through provocative and imaginative interventions into Western European and North American art histories, Monkman reinterprets colonial narratives to centre Indigenous perspectives and histories.
Central to the exhibition is Monkman’s gender-fluid alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle – a time-travelling, shape-shifting, supernatural being who appears across film and performance works. Embodying both beauty and defiance, Miss Chief offers a powerful reimagining of Indigenous sexuality, agency, and self-determination.
By creating subversive counter-narratives, Monkman challenges dominant historical accounts of Indigenous culture and sovereignty, while celebrating the resilience, complexity, and strength of Indigenous communities.
This exhibition marks the first solo presentation of Monkman’s video and performance works in Australia, offering audiences a rare and compelling insight into one of the most vital voices in contemporary art today.
Curated by: Myles Russell-Cook
About the artist:
Kent Monkman (b. 1965, St Marys, Ontario) is a member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba, Canada), he lives and works between New York City and Toronto.
Kent Monkman’s works have been exhibited at institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; Hayward Gallery, London; Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Musée d’art Contemporain de Rochechouart; the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; and the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College, Hanover. Monkman has had two nationally touring solo exhibitions, Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience (2017–2020), and The Triumph of Mischief (2007–2010).