Kent Monkman : Officer and Laughing Girl / L'Officier et la jeune fille riant

This bilingual volume explores Cree Canadian artist Kent Monkman's five-part reimagining of Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl, through Monkman's Two Spirit alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle.

Kent Monkman is frequently inspired by museum collections, re-envisioning iconic works through a contemporary Indigenous lens. He explores themes of colonization, sexuality, loss and resilience—the complexities of historic and contemporary Indigenous experiences—across painting, film/video, performance and installation. His gender-fluid alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, often appears in his work as a time-traveling, shapeshifting, supernatural being who reverses the colonial gaze to challenge received notions of history and Indigenous peoples.In this English / Canadian French volume, Monkman, as Miss Chief, is seated in his paintings across from a male figure in a room similar to the one in Vermeer’s iconic Officer and Laughing Girl. The five paintings depict Miss Chief joined variously by a 17th-century Dutch officer, an 18th-century French explorer, a 19th-century American soldier, a 20th-century Catholic priest and a 21st-century tech executive.