Queer Horizons Speaker Series | The Great Mother and the Golden Child: Sculpture, Settler Colonialism, and Queer Possibility in Winnipeg (1904-2021)

Join David Churchill (University of Manitoba) to explore the “lives” of two prominent statues that for a hundred years were part of the visual landscape of the Manitoba Legislature and Grounds in Winnipeg Manitoba.

These two statues were/are arguably the best-known works of public art in Manitoba. Though created slightly over a decade apart, both statues share several distinctive features. Both are oversized figurative works designed to impress. Both are highly gendered representations of bodies – one depicting the 19th century's most prominent individual, a sixty-something woman, dressed in elaborate garb, siting in frozen majesty. The other an idealized image of a fully naked athletic male youth, captured mid-stride. Yet, over the last three decades one of these statues became a contentious focus of protest – particularly in terms Indigenous relations with the Crown and the Canadian Government – while the other has become a focus for artistic reinterpretation particularly by queer and indigenous artists.

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