Tickets now on sale for MOA’s latest exhibit – Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience

Death of the Virgin, Kent Monkman (2016)

The Museum of Anthropology, a place of world arts and cultures with a special emphasis on the First Nations peoples and other cultural communities of British Columbia, re-opened on July 8. With the re-opening, MOA introduced Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience, an exhibit that carries the viewer on a journey through the past 150 years of Canada. The postponed critically acclaimed exhibition was originally scheduled for May 8 – October 12, 2020, and will now display from August 6, 2020, to January 3, 2021, making its final stop in Vancouver following a three-year, cross-country tour, during a pivotal moment in the global discourse on systemic racism.

Shame and Prejudice features nearly 80 pieces; paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations by one of Canada’s most provocative artists, Kent Monkman, lauded for his fearless, and vital, commentary. Monkman, a Canadian contemporary artist of Cree ancestry, offers both a searing critique of Canadian colonial policies, past and present and a moving tribute to Indigenous resilience in this timely and powerful solo exhibition.

The Daddies, Kent Monkman (2016)

As artist Kent Monkman explains, “The last 150 years—the period of Modernity—represents the most devastating period for First Peoples, including the signing of the numbered treaties, the reserve system, genocidal policies of the residential schools, mass incarceration and urban squalor.”

Monkman, allows their gender-fluid, time-travelling alter-ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, to narrate the story of the exhibit, told through the lens of Indigenous resilience. Miss Chief leads us from New France and Confederation to the urban environment of Winnipeg’s North End and contemporary life on the reserve. It is a journey that reclaims and reinserts Indigenous voices into the collective memory of Canada, challenging and shattering colonial ideas of our history. 

The Scream, Kent Monkman (2017)

While Monkman employs satirical humour to undermine the white-washing of Canada’s past, his commentary takes a poignant tone when exploring the loss and violence experienced by Indigenous women and children. In Death of the Virgin (After Caravaggio) (2016), a replication of the baroque master’s painting of the same name, Monkman replaces Caravaggio’s virgin with a young Indigenous woman, in a commentary on the missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. The artist also takes on residential schools — one of Canada’s most shameful atrocities — in The Scream (2017), a jarring depiction of the forceful removal of Indigenous infants and children from their homes. The policy’s tragic consequences are further illuminated with a display of Indigenous cradleboards juxtaposed with chalk outlines of missing traditional baby carriers.

 Tickets to Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience are now on sale at moa.ubc.ca.