Kent Monkman / Gisele Gordon: SPECTACLE & IMPERMANENCE at Daniels
SPECTACLE & IMPERMANENCE
A UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO TRI-CAMPUS EVENT SERIES
KENT MONKMAN/GISELE GORDON: ISKOOTAO
Friday November 19, 4:00 - 5:30pm
Daniels Faculty, 230 College Street, Rm 066
Reception to Follow - Larry Wayne Richards Gallery
Respondent: Scott Sørli, Sessional Lecturer, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design
Interdisciplinary Canadian artist of Cree ancestry, Kent Monkman and collaborator, media-based artist and Curator Gisele Gordon, will offer views of several of Monkman’s iconic performance works that feature his alter-ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. The works challenge representations of "Indians" in the dominant cultural imaginary and its colonial legacies, dismantling commonly held assumptions regarding history, Native peoples, and their sexualities. Iskootao was recently performed at Nuit Blanche in Toronto. A Trilogy of short films on the adventures of Miss Eagle Testicle, including Group of Seven Inches, will be presented and discussed. ___________________________________________________________________
The series is presented by the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design and the Department of Art, Visual Studies Program, University of Toronto. Co-curators are Tom Bessai, Architect and Assistant Professor of Architecture from the Daniels Faculty and Lisa Steele, Artist and Associate Chair of Visual Studies. The series is sponsored by The Jackman Humanities Institute and is part of the JHI Program for the Arts, 2010- 2011 on the theme of Image and Spectacle.
Spectacle and Impermanence will engage students and faculty on all three campuses of the University of Toronto. Prominent Toronto-based visual artists will present small prototypes of larger - often spectacular in size - projects. Each installation/ presentation will be followed by a discussion session with students and faculty led by a moderator/ respondent. The discussion sessions will attempt to locate these very temporal works within the broader architectural and cultural discourse on public space, identity and the city.
A small group of graduate students assembled from the two participating faculties will be transported by minibus to each of the events in the fall series. This group will then be provided with modest materials and a public space in which to produce a collaborative event/installation in response to what they have seen and experienced. The student project will be mounted early in the winter 2011 academic term. Each of the participating artists and respondents from the fall series will be encouraged to attend along with the broader U of T community.