\u2013 George Catlin<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The custom that George Catlin, a white America painter and \u201cspecialist\u201d of the representation of Native American ways, is referring to is that of the Berdashe. \u201cUsed indiscriminately refers to homosexuals, bisexuals, androgynes, transvestites, hermaphrodites and eunuchs,\u201d1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 1 <\/a> - Pierrette D\u00e9esy, \u201cThe Berdaches: \u2018Man-Woman\u2019 in North America\u201d, English translation by S. M. Van Wyck, 1993, never published in its entirety of \u201cL\u2019homme-femme. (Les Berdashes en Am\u00e9rique du Nord),\u201d Libre \u2013 politique, anthropologie, philosophie<\/em> (Paris, Payot: 1978): 57-102. The article is available on line in the collection \u201cLes classiques des sciences sociales,\u201d Universit\u00e9 du Qu\u00e9bec \u00e0 Chicoutimi, at: http:\/\/classiques.uqac.ca\/contemporains\/desy_pierrette\/homme_femme_Berdashe \/homme_femme.html<\/span> the term Berdashe is more specifically associated with men or women who, in some Native American tribes, freely choose to take on the social role of the opposite sex by cross-dressing and carrying out the daily tasks of their adopted \u00adgender. Catlin\u2019s highly ethnocentric and profoundly puritan quote,2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - The George Catlin quotation displayed in the MMFA is taken from From Letters and Notes on the Manners<\/em>, Customs, and Conditions of North American Indians,<\/em> published in London in 1844. <\/span> which was placed as a preamble on the wall adjacent to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts\u2019 exhibition room where Kent Monkman\u2019s work Dance to the Berdashe <\/em>was on display from May 6 to October 4, 2009, abruptly grabs the viewer\u2019s attention and accurately reflects a sombre image of ethnological excesses. Though, as we know the colonial undertaking succeeded in making the Berdashe disappear, Kent Monkman proudly spells his\/her return. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A multidisciplinary artist of Anglo-Irish and Cree ancestry, Monkman casts a critical look at North American artistic canons throughout his work. By way of quotations and visual references he uses different mediums to revisit the visual repertory from which the imagery of the \u201cNew World\u201d was built up, and this by paying particular attention to portraits taken of First Nations. The artist\u2019s works, which are like genealogical allegories of representation on North American territory, aim nothing less than to deconstruct colonial mythologies in order to re-establish somewhat of a (multi)cultural equilibrium. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the style and with the mastery of thenineteenth-century romantic landscape artists, Monkman reworks certain well-known paintings in order to breathe new life into them and to provide another point of view\u2009\u2014 one that is more contemporary and critical. The imposing painting, Trappers of Men <\/em>(2006), recently acquired by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, for example, displays a group of men who are curiously staged in a sublime landscape by Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) originally titled Among the Sierra Nevada, California<\/em> (1868). In Monkman\u2019s depiction the Sierra Nevada becomes a partially anachronistictableau vivant in which the power relations between the various characters are played out. Notably, one encounters Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) a white American photographer who\u2009\u2014\u2009even though he\u2019s distracted due to the appearance of a masculine Venus in drag\u2009\u2014\u2009is getting ready to take a \u201ctraditional\u201d photograph of two Amerindians (it\u2019s worth pointing out that one of the two models is just about to don a long black wig equipped with a feather). In the centre one sees Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) taking on Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) who\u2019s in the process of painting one of his primary colour \u201ccheckerboards.\u201d The altercation between the two men leads to a flow of \u201cdrippings\u201don an animal skin that an Amerindian artist uses as a canvas. Standing next to this Indian man is anineteenth-century artist\u2009\u2014\u2009most probably George Catlin (1796-1872)\u2009\u2014\u2009who gathers doodles and notes about the Aboriginal world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Besides its many historical, visual and iconographic references to important art world figures and old artworks, Monkman\u2019s pictorial work, which is both kitsch and caustic, is evidently charged with a strong homoerotic tension that notably echoes a desire\u2009\u2014\u2009often troubled and malevolent\u2009\u2014\u2009for the Other. All the while insinuating that a certain number of exchanges (other than material) occurred between Amerindians and Europeans, the artist\u2019s work upholds that the sexual oppression of the First Nations people went hand in hand with racial oppression. Guided by Judeo-Christian values, the European ethnographic gaze\u2009\u2014\u2009male, white, heterosexual\u2009\u2014\u2009condemned (and at times even occulted) some sexual practices, such as the Berdashe, which did not correspond to the moral principles imported from the \u201cold continent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Monkman\u2019s latest video installation is a response to thefifty-sixth \u00adletter of Catlin\u2019s memoir in which he condemns the existence of the Berdashe, but also to one of his paintings called Dance to the Berdashe<\/em> depicting a ceremony in honour of this singular character. As one would expect, far from disapproving of the Berdashe\u2019s hybridity, Monkman\u2019s work glorifies it. At the outset, a hand wearing a red glove draws \u201cprimitive\u201d silhouettes on four bison-skin shaped projection screens, the flat drawings then becoming suddenly animated and brought back to life in the guise of Native warriors wearing red, white and black costumes that echo traditional Amerindian outfits updated for today\u2019s tastes. These dancer-warriors proceed to athletically shake and move to musical rhythms occasionally interwoven with a cappella singing, flutes, breathing and screaming.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Inspired by traditional pow-wows and contemporary dance, the choreography of the dancers was developed by Michael Greyeyes and the music by Phil Strong.<\/span> Various musical movements, each one punctuated by a crescendo, maintain a certain dramatic tension that is entirely sustained by the dancers\u2019 expression. The group forms a circle around a fifth \u201cbison skin\u201d suspended in the space, as they impatiently await the arrival of the celebrated one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At first crouching, the Berdashe appears like a mirage, somewhat out of focus. He then rises on platform shoes in the middle of the room which suddenly lights up under his aura. His long black hair, long fringedress and red scarf wave in the wind. And to a rousing techno beat he begins turning about himself as he languishingly sways his hips. Just as in Catlin\u2019s work the Berdashe presented here is a man dressed as a woman. To be more precise it\u2019s the dancer Miss Chief Eagle Testickle<\/em>, Monkman\u2019s fictional alter ego. A flamboyant character, proud and glamorous and, if one wants, a brave and audacious drag queen\u2009\u2014\u2009present in most of the artist\u2019s works4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - The Venus in the painting Trappers of Men<\/em> (2006) is Miss Chief Eagle Testickle<\/em>.<\/span>\u2009\u2014\u2009who has come to metaphorically reclaim territories that are his\/her due. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While there is much mobilization nowadays to counter homophobia, Monkman rightly sets the record straight in recalling that it\u2019s the English and French colonizers who imposed repressive sexual norms on our society through their conservative values. Though certainly singular, the Berdashe was nevertheless accepted in many Aboriginal communities who were more libertarian in sexual matters and gave free rein to this third sex. According to Monkman, Christianization unfortunately had negative impacts on Aboriginal sexuality.5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Kent Monkman, The Impact of Christianity on Aboriginal Sexuality<\/em>, Cybermuse, accessed at: http:\/\/cybermuse.beaux-arts.ca\/cybermuse\/docs\/MonkmanClip6_e.pdf<\/span> Due to the inculcation of homophobia the hybrid male-female figures disappeared from Native communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDo Europeans have Berdashes in their cultures?\u201d the curator Cathy Mattes asks Miss<\/em> Chief Eagle Testickle<\/em>. \u201cNo, and their world was lacking<\/em> the Berdashe to provide a healing mediation of the genders,\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - C<\/strong>athy Mattes, \u201cAn Interview with Miss Chief Eagle Testickle,\u201d Kent Monkman:The Triumph of the Mischief<\/em> (Hamilton: Art Gallery of Hamilton, 2007), 110.<\/span> Miss Chief<\/em> responds. Miss Chief Testickle<\/em> applies a transcultural electroshock to counter homophobia and racial discrimination. It’s up to us now to join in the dance and free our minds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Translated from the French by Bernard Sch\u00fctze<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/68_AC03_deBlois_Monkman_Trappers-detail_3-scaled.jpg\")
Trappers of Men <\/em>(detail), 2006.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/68_AC03_deBlois_Monkman_Berdache-scaled.jpg\")
Dance to the Berdashe<\/em>, Mus\u00e9e des beaux-arts de Montr\u00e9al, 2008.
Photo: courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n