“Some of these are pretty amazing,” said the Gazette photographer accompanying me on a press tour of the powerful new Kent Monkman exhibition History Is Painted by the Victors, at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from Saturday through March 8.

The celebrated Cree artist’s work has that effect on people. Inspired by 18th- and 19th-century neoclassical history painting, his monumental tableaus reimagine scenes of colonization by putting Indigenous people at the centre.

“When you stand in front of a big painting, it just envelops you differently,” Monkman told The Gazette Tuesday morning. “You have a different experience physically to the work. I make large paintings because I wanted to authorize Indigenous experience into this canon of history painting.”

His interest in the style began from “an absolute love and infatuation with those paintings,” their scale, technical proficiency and capacity for drama. But he felt something was missing.

“I was looking at settler paintings in museums and realizing that museums participate in perpetuating our exclusion from art history and the storytelling of this continent. By entering the museum, especially with large-scale work, you can shift the narrative; you can shift art history.”

Monkman has been shifting art history for over two decades, and the MMFA has followed his career with interest. Originally shown at the Denver Art Museum, the current exhibition features........

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