The Four Continents

Bringing together the large-scale works that comprise Kent Monkman's suite of paintings entitled The Four Continents, a reworking of Tiepolo's Apollo and the Four Continents, this book explores the creation of these contemporary studies that address the original Eurocentric fantasies of the other.

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The Four Continents presents in full, with gatefolds, the large- scale works that comprise Kent Monkman's suite of paintings entitled The Four Continents, a reworking of Tiepolo's Apollo and the Four Continents.Monkman's works examine the way Indigenous American and Canadian history has been presented by nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists. He constructs new stories through images that take into account the missing narratives and perspectives of Aboriginal peoples; the result is a series of tragicomic scenarios that are mythical, graphic, satirical and inherently anti-colonialist. Many feature strong queer or gay male imagery, which have always been a part of Aboriginal culture due to 'two-spirit' Indigenous sexualities, yet have rarely been acknowledged as such.Kent Monkman is a Canadian artist of Cree ancestry who works with a variety of mediums, including painting, film/ video, performance and installation. He has had exhibitions at numerous major museums worldwide, including Witte de With, Rotterdam; The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto; and MASS MoCA, Massachusetts, USA.Following The Four Continents, a major monographic overview of Monkman's work will be published by Black Dog Publishing in 2018, Kent Monkman: Shame and Prejudice, a Story of Resilience