KENT MONKMAN'S ANOTHER FEATHER IN HER BONNET
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A CANADIAN PREMIERE
KENT MONKMAN’S ANOTHER FEATHER IN HER BONNET
A performance video presented at the MMFA in collaboration with Jean Paul Gaultier
as a gesture of reconciliation and intercultural recognition
Jean Paul Gaultier and Miss Chief Eagle Testickle (Kent Monkman),
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, September 8, 2017. Photo: Frédéric Faddoul
Montreal, February 7, 2019 – The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) is presenting for the first time
in Canada Another Feather in Her Bonnet (2017), a performance video by Toronto-based Cree artist Kent
Monkman, with the special participation of French fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier. This video
portrays the symbolic “marriage” of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, Monkman’s shape-shifting, time-
travelling, gender-fluid alter ego, and Jean Paul Gaultier, two fervent advocates of sexual diversity. The
MMFA’s presentation also includes Monkman’s installation Théâtre de Cristal (2017), recently donated
by the artist to the Museum.
On September 8, 2017, at the invitation of the MMFA and with the special participation of Jean Paul
Gaultier, Kent Monkman gave a performance in connection with the exhibition Love Is Love: Wedding Bliss
for All à la Jean Paul Gaultier. From this performance, Monkman made a classic wedding video, capturing
and challenging all the clichés of Western cis-gendered heterosexual romantic love: Another Feather in Her
Bonnet (2017), now being released to the public.
The performance takes place inside the glass beaded tipi Monkman made for his installation Théâtre de
Cristal and features the inclusive and committed union between the “enfant terrible of fashion” and Miss
Chief Eagle Testickle. The artists exchange vows of mutual respect and friendship in the presence of two
witnesses, Nathalie Bondil, the MMFA’s Director General and Chief Curator, and Thierry-Maxime Loriot,
curator of the exhibition Love Is Love. Actor Andrew Schiver plays the part of the officiant, and Ève Salvail,
Gaultier’s muse and model, that of the maid of honour.
For the faux ceremony, Miss Chief wears a white feather headdress created by Gaultier for the wedding
gown of the 2002-2003 fall-winter haute couture collection The Hussars. Inspired by headdresses of
Indigenous peoples of the Plains, this headdress was originally displayed in the exhibition Love Is Love:
Wedding Bliss for All à la Jean Paul Gaultier. In the context of the debate over cultural appropriation, the
presence of this headdress in the exhibition demanded a response, so the MMFA invited Monkman to
create an artistic commentary. His reply: Miss Chief would gracefully accept Jean Paul Gaultier’s hand in
marriage. With his long-time collaborator Gisèle Gordon, Monkman designed this performance to be a
symbolic union that represents two artists coming together to challenge ideas of cultural appropriation and
build an artistic union based on mutual affection and greater cultural understanding.
“Through the alliance of marriage, we learn to understand and forgive the mistakes of our partners and to
build true understanding. Marriage encourages and nurtures new life, new experiences. Today, Miss Chief
accepts Jean Paul Gaultier’s proposal of artistic union as an aesthetic alliance leading to mutual respect and
cultural understanding,” said Kent Monkman.
Indigenous headdresses are imbued with spiritual significance. An earned honour, they come with protocols
and responsibilities. Monkman’s artistic claiming of this faux headdress speaks to the broader stereotype
of the Indigenous woman as perceived by the colonial gaze. Through Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, Monkman
evokes the gender-fluid and/or two-spirit people venerated and accepted by most pre-contact Indigenous
nations, whose cross-dressing ways scandalized and were suppressed by European colonists.
“Probably sparked by a subconscious creative inspiration from a fold in the space-time fabric, Jean Paul
Gaultier had created this headdress destined for his future collaborator, the ravishing Miss Chief Eagle
Testickle. Miss Chief accepted Jean Paul Gaultier’s proposal to cement a mutually enriching artistic alliance.
Henceforth, no one but she, the superb illusionist and warrior of her people, could wear this finery,”
concluded Monkman.
“The appropriation of Indigenous culture is nothing new in the realms of art and fashion, and the North
American debate over this issue has made considerable progress. At the invitation of the Museum, Kent
Monkman created this performance with Jean Paul Gaultier to reappropriate the headdress. Avoiding the
double impasse represented by indifference, on the one hand, and self-censorship on the other, the MMFA
conceived a constructive and creative ‘third way’ through this performance, a gesture of friendship, a
dialogue between two creators. Presented at the new Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris in 2018, this video
is now being shown for the first time in Canada. While the debate over cultural appropriation still rages
today, this positive example of reconciliation makes us reflect,” added Nathalie Bondil, Director General
and Chief Curator of the MMFA.
As an accompaniment to the performance,
Monkman collaborated with Toronto
photographer Chris Chapman to create
wedding-portrait style photographic art
pieces of Miss Chief and Jean Paul Gaultier,
adopting the style and presentation of the
19th century French cabinet card format.
The video performance Another Feather in
Her Bonnet (duration 5 min. 2 sec.) was
produced in collaboration with the
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Maison
Jean Paul Gaultier.
Kent Monkman (born in 1965), Théâtre de Cristal, 2007, crystal, projector, chandelier,
Group of Seven Inches video (2005, 7 min. 31 sec.) 3/3. Photo Guy L'Heureux
New acquisition
Along with Another Feather in Her Bonnet, this exhibition includes a new acquisition: Théâtre de Cristal
(2007), an installation consisting of an elegant tipi of shimmering glass beads running along transparent
threads, with a large ballroom chandelier at the top. On the ground within these sparkling lines is a screen
shaped like a stretched buffalo skin, referencing the connection Plains Indigenous peoples have with the
buffalo, an animal central to their physical and spiritual sustenance, whose numbers were nearly decimated
by colonial activity. The video Group of Seven Inches (2005) projected on the buffalo-skin screen relates the
research that Miss Chief Eagle Testickle undertakes with two colonists: Monkman reverses the colonial gaze
of 19th-century adventurers of artists such as Paul Kane and George Catlin by positioning Miss Chief as the
Indigenous artist cataloguing the manners and customs of the European male. Monkman prompts us to
think about our mistaken preconceptions – both inherited and contemporary – of Indigenous peoples.
With a total of 15 works by Monkman, the Museum owns the largest collection of the artist’s works in
Canada, largely thanks to the support of the Toronto collector Bruce Bailey.
About the artist
Born in 1965, Cree artist Kent Monkman reviews with humour and insolence Western depictions of
Indigenous peoples in the history of art, making use of a variety of mediums, including painting, film, videos,
performance and installations in his original and playful practice. His work has been shown in numerous
solo exhibitions (Art Museum, University of Toronto, 2017; University of Michigan Institute for the
Humanities, Ann Arbour, 2016; Musée d’art contemporain de Rochechouart, France, 2014) and collective
exhibitions (Dioramas, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2017; Oh Canada!, North Adams, United States, 2012 ; Once
Upon a Time… The Western, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2017). His art is found in many public and
private collections including those of the MMFA, the National Gallery of Canada, the Denver Art Museum
and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. Monkman is a member of the Fisher River
First Nation in Treaty 1 territory.
Acknowledgements
The MMFA acknowledges the vital contribution of Air Canada and thanks its Young Philanthropists’ Circle,
a proud supporter of the Museum’s contemporary art program.
– 30 –
Thursday, February 7, 5.30 p.m.: Unveiling of Théâtre de Cristal, in the company of Kent Monkman.
MMFA, 1380 Sherbrooke St. W. RSVP: presse@mbamtl.org
Download high-resolution images here.
Press Room: mbam.qc.ca/en/press-room
Information
Patricia Lachance Maude N. Béland
Media Relations Officer | MMFA Media Relations Officer | MMFA
T. 514-285-1600, ext. 315 T. 514-285-1600, ext. 205
C. 514-235-2044 C. 514-886-8328
plachance@mbamtl.org mbeland@mbamtl.org
About the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Boasting more than 1.3 million visitors annually, the MMFA is one of Canada’s most visited museums and the eighth-
most visited museum in North America. The Museum’s original temporary exhibitions combine various artistic
disciplines – fine arts, music, film, fashion and design – and are exported around the world. Its rich encyclopedic
collection, distributed among five pavilions, includes international art, world cultures, decorative arts and design, and
Quebec and Canadian art. The Museum has seen exceptional growth in recent years with the addition of two new
pavilions: the Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion, in 2011, and the Michal and Renata Hornstein Pavilion for Peace, in
2016. The MMFA complex also includes Bourgie Hall, a 460-seat concert hall, as well as an auditorium and a movie
theatre. The MMFA is one of Canada’s leading publishers of art books in French and English, which are distributed
internationally. The Museum also houses the Michel de la Chenelière International Atelier for Education and Art
Therapy, the largest educational complex in a North American art museum, enabling the MMFA to offer innovative
educational, wellness and art therapy programmes. mbam.qc.caYou can also read
