A journey through erased history: Kent Monkman’s Shame and Prejudice

Of his painting "The Scream," Monkman writes simply: “This is the one I cannot talk about. The pain is too deep. We were never the same.” Image: Collection of the Denver Art Museum, Native Arts acquisition fund

You move through Kent Monkman’s art exhibit Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience encountering found objects from Canadian museums, large canvases in the grand manner of European and American history paintings, and three-dimensional installations that tell the story of Canada from the all but erased Indigenous perspective...

There is nothing subtle about Monkman’s exhibit, which is now completing a national tour with an extended stay at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Starting with images of the European slaughter of the beaver and the buffalo, to the end it functions like a bracing shower startling you into a deeper awareness of the tragic effects of colonization on the first peoples who have inhabited these lands from time immemorial. To say it grabs you by the gut would be an understatement.

Read Peter Elliott's article on anglicanjournal.com