Dunlop Art Gallery

Item Name: Moccasins
Title: Hot-Rod Moccasins
Maker: Kevin McKenzie
Year: 2023
Materials: tanned deer hide, sinew, beads
Measurements: 3" x 4" x 12"
ID Number: PC2023.1
Legal Status: PERMANENT COLLECTION


Extended Label Info: This work was created for Kevin McKenzie’s exhibition “Edge of Seventeen”, which was exhibited at Dunlop Art Gallery, Sherwood Village Branch in spring 2023. The exhibition served to collect and preserve McKenzie’s memories of his past, including his father’s teachings and passion for hockey into a contemporary Indigenous experience. Through this work, McKenzie linked repressed childhood memories of his father to his current state of Indigenous regeneration and resistance to colonial assimilation. McKenzie created “Hot-Rod Moccasins” from his mom’s old black leather jacket. He lined the work with crushed red velvet and beading on the vamp. The vamps feature beaded hot rod flames. McKenzie’s work is typically imbued with this playful reverence for the pop culture he grew up around as a young Indigenous man, reflecting a personal transformation, through a process of reconstructing Indigenous identity and masculinity. Kevin McKenzie is Cree/Métis, Saskatchewan artist, based in Brandon, Manitoba. He is a member of the Cowessess First Nation of Saskatchewan, Treaty 4. He holds a BFA and an MFA from the University of Regina. McKenzie has exhibited nationally and internationally at notable galleries such as Museum of Arts and Design, New York, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and Pataka Art Gallery Museum, New Zealand. McKenzie's artwork is represented in numerous public and corporate collections and has a permanent public sculpture in Whistler B.C. commissioned by VANOC Cultural Olympiad 2010. In 2022 he was commissioned by the President’s Office at Brandon University to produce a public sculpture dedicated to Truth and Reconciliation. Currently, McKenzie is an assistant professor and faculty member in the IWGI Department of Visual Art at Brandon University.