The Great Mystery
The Hood Museum of Art
April 8 - December 16, 2023
Featuring two paintings commissioned by the Hood Museum of Art, Kent Monkman’s exhibition The Great Mystery centres on the Cree concept of mamahtâwisiwin, a state of tapping into the great mystery of the universe, of spiritual interconnectedness of all life, and of unknowing-ness. Canonical Western abstract painters like Mark Rothko pushed the language of painting to the outer limits and also extended the thematic explorations of the subconscious. When Indigenous and settlers observe each other across a vast cultural divide, the intersection is a junction of different values from which there is often misunderstanding and puzzlement. In folding the Cree concept of mamahtâwisiwin into Western abstract paintings, The Great Mystery explores the commonalities in our understandings of the unknowable.
Exhibition installation photography by Rob Strong