What To See: Faye HeavyShield and Kent Monkman

If you are travelling to Toronto or Montréal this September be sure to visit these two exhibitions by Faye HeavyShield and Kent Monkman.

Faye HeavyShield’s Issokawo’taan will be opening at the Art Gallery of Ontario this Saturday, September 6, 2025 and will be on view until February 22, 2026. For her first solo exhibition at the AGO, she will present several works, including a re-staging of her acclaimed 1995–96 multimedia installation Venus as Torpedo. This large-scale installation, with audio in both Blackfoot and English, features assorted clothing items draped over a protruding arm that extends across the museum floor. 

Faye HeavyShield, recipient of the 2021 Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO, has for more than three decades created powerful installations and sculptures, characterized by repeating forms and motifs, including spirals, circles, grids, and lines. Drawing from personal experience, her work reveals a deep relationship with the land, in particular the Kainai (Blood) Nation in Southern Alberta where she grew up and where she still lives. 

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Kent Monkman’s travelling exhibition, History is Painted by the Victors, will be on view at the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts from September 27, 2025 to March 8, 2026.

History is Painted by the Victors explores several key moments in Monkman’s career, including the inception of Monkman’s provocateur alter ego—Miss Chief Eagle Testickle— whom he often places in his canonical landscape and genre paintings of 19th century North America as well as The Rendezvous series, which focuses on the “golden age” of settler/Indigenous relations. Through his painting, Monkman pushes forward an understanding of the lived experiences of Indigenous people today while confronting colonial injustices.

 

Faye HeavyShield
Venus as Torpedo (detail), 1995, re-created 2025
Mixed media sculptural installation with audio component
AGO

I’ll know you when I see you (detail), 2021
Installation view, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver
SITE Photography

Kent Monkman
Sunday in the Park, 2010
Acrylic on canvas
72″ x 96″ / 182.9 x 243.8 cm