KENT MONKMAN is an interdisciplinary Cree visual artist. A member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba, Canada), he lives and works in Dish With One Spoon Territory (Toronto, Canada). Monkman's painting and installation works are held in public collections of institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Denver Art Museum; Hirshhorn Museum; National Gallery of Canada; Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal; Art Gallery of Ontario; and La maison rouge, Paris. GIS LE GORDONis a settler media artist and writer based in Dish With One Spoon Territory (Toronto, Canada). Her solo work includes the feature-length documentary, The Tunguska Project (Best Feature Length Film at the Planet in Focus Film Festival, 2005), the video installations Crosscurrent (2013 Moscow Biennale), and The Land that Dreams. Gis le Gordon and Kent Monkman's collaborative art practice spans three decades. Their work together includes the sound and light installation Iskootao (Nuit Blanche, 2010) and over a dozen short films that have screened at TIFF, Sundance, and Berlin. Gordon wrote the narrative text for Monkman's Being Legendary exhibition and co-wrote, with Monkman, the exhibition text for Shame and Prejudice- A Story of Resilience (nominated for the 2017 Ontario Association of Art Gallery Awards for Curatorial Art Writing).
""Long a persona stalking the paintings of provocative Cree artist Kent Monkman, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle steps off the canvas to tell her own story—and that of the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island—in a two volume collaboration with Gisèle Gordon. Lavishly illustrated with Monkman’s paintings, The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle is at once (and seamlessly) a unique story of an even more unique deity, an exposition of nêhiyaw (Cree) beliefs and a primer in nêhiyawêwin (Cree Language), and a deeply researched history of contact, colonization, and resurgence. A full-blown remediation of the politically-charged and erotic world of Monkman’s paintings, these books educate, inspire, entertain, and leave the reader breathless."" —Steve Collis, 2024 VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award judge