The Low-Res Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture Series resource guides contain upcoming speakers' biographies, articles, video and audio content, related publications in the Flaxman Library, and additional online resources. These guides may be used in preparation for the public lecture, studio visits, and post-lecture discussion.
Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds: Wednesday, June 18, 6:00–7:30 p.m. CT
SAIC Ballroom, 112 South Michigan Avenue
Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds is an artist and an advocate for Indigenous communities worldwide. His work includes multidisciplinary forms of public art messages, large scale drawings, Neuf Series acrylic paintings, prints, works in glass, and monumental porcelain enamel on steel outdoor sculpture.
The tribal elder serves as an instructor/painter in the traditional Cheyenne Earth Renewal Ceremony at Concho, Oklahoma and is one of the leaders of the Cheyenne Elk Scraper Warrior Society. Heap of Birds’ artistic creations were shown in the 2007 Venice Biennale. While representing Indigenous communities his art focuses first on social justice, and on the personal freedom to live within the tribal circle as an expressive individual.
His work has been exhibited at some of the most renowned institutions in the world, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Orchard Gallery, Northern Ireland; the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations Reservation in Oklahoma; Site Santa Fe Museum, New Mexico; Grand Palais in Paris, France; National Institute of Education Gallery, Singapore; and Documenta in Kassal, Germany. His art holds a place in the collections of many museums, such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Most recently, his work was acquired for the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; Forge Project, Hudson, New York, Tia Collection, Santa Fe, New Mexico, the British Museum and Tate Modern in London; Anchorage Museum in Alaska, LACMA in Los Angeles and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. In 2012, he was named USA Ford Fellow, and in 2014 he was honored as a Distinguished Alumni from the University of Kansas. During 2020, the artist was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received grants and awards from The National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation, Bonfil Stanton Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trust, AT&T, Lila Wallace Foundation, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Sharing his expertise and talent with the next generation of artists, Heap of Birds has taught at Yale University, University of Capetown, South Africa and the University of Oklahoma. Now retired from teaching at the University of Oklahoma, after 30 years of service, he is Professor Emeritus.
Heap of Birds received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas. The artists’ master of fine art degree is from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. He has also completed graduate level study at the Royal College of Art in London. He has been awarded honorary doctor of fine arts and letters degrees from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada and California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.
Artist Website
Artworks in AIC's Collection
Artworks in MOMA's Collection
Image credit: Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, photo credit: Lexi Albaugh
Ethics in a World of Strange Strangers: Edgar Heap of Birds at Home and Abroad*
Bill Anthes | Art Journal, vol. 71 (3) | pp. 58-77 | Fall 2012
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
Native American Visual Autobiography: Figuring Place, Subjectivity, and History*
Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds, Hertha D. Sweet Wong | The Iowa Review, vol. 30 (3) | pp. 145-156 | Winter 2000/2001
*This is a library resource that requires ARTIC login
Edgar Heap of Birds
by
For over three decades, contemporary Native American artist Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds has pursued a disciplined practice in multiple media, having shown his paintings, drawings, prints, and text-based conceptual art throughout numerous national and international galleries and public spaces. In the first book-length study of this important artist, Bill Anthes analyzes Heap of Birds's art and politics in relation to the international contemporary art scene, Native American history, and settler colonialism. Foregrounding how Heap of Birds roots his practice in Cheyenne spirituality and an indigenous way of seeing and being in the world, Anthes describes how Heap of Birds likens his art to "sharp rocks"--weapons delivering trenchant critiques of the loss of land, life, and autonomy endured by Native Americans. Whether appearing as interventions in public spaces or in a gallery, Heap of Birds's carefully honed artworks pose questions about time, modernity, identity, power, and the meaning and value of contemporary art in a global culture.