HOCK E AYE VI Edgar Heap of Birds
HOCK E AYE VI Edgar Heap of Birds is a multidisciplinary Cheyenne-Arapaho artist whose works include
drawings, paintings, prints, public art messages, and monumental porcelain enamel on steel outdoor sculpture.
Born in Wichita, Kansas and currently based in Oklahoma City, Heap of Birds' work is distinguished by his
sophisticated analysis of language and his appropriation of public spaces such as billboards and buses.
Reclaiming space for Aboriginal voices, his work reasserts the presence and strength of contemporary Aboriginal
communities in the face of both historical and current realities of injustice and discrimination.
Also an educator and curator, Heap of Birds has served as a visiting lecturer around the world and is currently
a Professor at the University of Oklahoma. His work has been widely exhibited internationally and he has
received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation and Pew Charitable
Trust among others.
[ contact ]
Presence and Resistance, 2006
Public art installation
(billboards and public signage texts)
[ selected photographs ]
Queen Street West (at Dovercourt Road and at Gladstone Avenue).
The social inequalities that aboriginal populations continue to endure across North America remains an
embarrassment for both Canada and the USA on the international stage. Native artists in both countries
address in theri work their peoples' continued struggles to lift themselves out of poverty and from the margins of society
into the modern world, on their own terms. One of these artists is Edgar Heap of Birds of the Cheyenne-Arapaho
nation, whose artistic practice is distinguished by close analysis of language and his appropriation of
commercial public spaces. His site specific text works installed along Queen Street West reaffirmed aboriginalaspirations and values.
"History and ownership to tell one's story is key for all of us to truly understand this world. In the
past, Indigenous peoples world wide have had limited privileges to make declarations concerning their
reality. In Nuit Blanche I seek to contribute to amending this absence of Indigenous voices by researching
Toronto's ancient and modern beginnings. From these investigations a voice will be heard in billboard
and public signage texts. These expressions will generate a new view of Toronto from a different cultural
and historical vantage point and declare the strong will of resistance of the First Nations Brothers
and Sisters."
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