Mistikôsiwak
It is December 19th, 2019 and a being in a tipi-shaped dress strides down the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The dress is white and bright pink, matching the bright satin pink gloves she wears. On her head sits a Cree headdress lined with pink sequins. The being is no other than Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, the drag persona and alter ego of Kent Monkman, a Candian Cree artist. Mounted on the walls of the Great Hall that Miss Chief walks through are two acrylic paintings both with her at the forefront. The diptych — titled Mistikôsiwak (Cree for “Wooden Boat People”) — depicts a reimagination of the French’s arrival to North America. In one painting, Miss Chief is naked save for a pink satin cloth between her legs, rainbow waist beads and earrings, and black patent stilettos. She stands at the edge of elevated land, extending a hand to struggling people in the water. In the other, she stands confidently in a boat too small for the amount of people it is carrying, leading migrants to their land. At 11 feet high and 22 feet wide, the paintings are impossible to miss.
The tongue-in-cheek style of the paintings and drag performance reflect that of camp, described as a love of the unnatural, the ingenious, and the exaggerated by American critic Susan Sontag. Sontag published her essay “Notes on Camp” in 1964, a time when New Hollywood was blooming and American fashion was undergoing a great shift. American pop culture — and the country as a whole — was transforming. Miss Chief Eagle Testickle represents camp both in painted form and out of it (during performance). She is extravagant, gender-fluid, playful, and her existence is ironic in every way possible.
Their campiness is what allows Mistikôsiwak and the accompanying performance to have as great of an effect as they do. Behind both is the idea of reversal, of flipping prevalent ideas in society on their heads. This is what camp is all about. The paintings and performance challenge the viewer’s perception of history. According to Monkman, European art and media has painted indigenous people as a “vanished people”, or belonging to the past. By contrasting historical scenes of European and Indigenous interaction with modern images and trends, Monkman challenges this perception and understanding of ingenious people’s place in the world.
As someone who has seen neither the paintings nor the drag performance in real life, an aspect of the art that I will not fully understand is the focus on migration. The Great Hall of the Met is the main entrance to the museum; entering the Met transports one from the streets of present-day New York to the world of art. In this case, visitors are migrants themselves; they have just arrived to a world in which historical roles have been reversed. Thanks to Monkman, the first thing they see in the new world is the welcoming and generous Miss Chief, hand extended.
