"GOLDEN BOY" - Oversized Faded Black Tee

"GOLDEN BOY" - Oversized Faded Black Tee

A mask of gold hides all deformities. - Thomas Dekker

I grew up in Winnipeg looking at the Golden Boy as a symbol of Manitoba, something polished, proud, and almost untouchable.

Recently, I have learned a substantial amount about Canada’s residential school system. The children taken from their families, the abuse they endured, the lives lost, and the generations of trauma that followed. What disturbed me almost as much as the history itself was how little of it I remembered being taught growing up, and how recent so much of it actually was.

"GOLDEN BOY" was created from that discomfort.

The scratch across the statue’s face tears through the gold to reveal a skeleton underneath, serving as reminder that something can appear honourable on the surface while concealing something much darker beneath it. The black bar across the eyes represents censorship, silence, and the ways governments and institutions can control what is acknowledged, remembered, or forgotten.

Behind the statue, the Flip The Script mark and globe are printed in orange, a colour that has become inseparable from remembrance of the children impacted by residential schools and the message that Every Child Matters.

I created this piece as a white Canadian who knows that this is not my history to claim or my story to tell on behalf of Indigenous people. My responsibility is to learn it, refuse to look away from it, listen to the people whose families and communities continue to live with its consequences, and stand beside them when the truth is uncomfortable.

This shirt is not meant to turn that suffering into an aesthetic. It is meant to question what we choose to celebrate, what gets left out of the story, and what might exist beneath the version of history we were handed.

- G

Shirt Stats

• Oversized fit
• Heavy weight, 6.5 oz, 16-singles, 100% cotton
• Dropped shoulders, side neck ribbing with twin stitching, stone wash finish with a worn look, side seamed, shoulder to shoulder tape, double needle hems, acid wash look, preshrunk to minimize shrinkage