Kent Monkman, Resurgence of the People
Kent Monkman
This is Resurgence of the People, created by Cree artist Kent Monkman, one of Canada's most famous living artists. It was commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and first exhibited inside the museum’s Great Hall.
At 11 feet by 22 feet, the painting is monumental in size. It’s actually one half of a diptych — an artwork in two parts — called mistikôsiwak, which means “wooden boat people.”
Resurgence pictures a present-day scene with a crowded boat navigating stormy waters, while its partner painting, Welcoming the Newcomers, shows a moment from the past as Indigenous people greet European settlers on the shore of what’s now North America.
Like so much of Monkman's work, these paintings challenge the colonial view of history by offering an Indigenous perspective. They suggest that some of the stories we’ve been told are incomplete, inaccurate, or worse.
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