Introduction

The seminal work of HOCK E AYE VI Edgar Heap of Birds, a Cheyenne-Arapaho artist, reveals fundamental differences between the experience and perception of Native American and Anglo-American cultures.

Working since the late 1970s and emerging in the early-to-mid 1980s, Heap of Birds has—by the example of his work and his extensive travel—encouraged indigenous artists to “build their own lives in the way they think it should be.” One of the more important artistic practitioners within a critical movement of Native American self-determination and self-definition, Heap of Birds turns the bias of Anglo-American language in on itself to uncover the deeply embedded racism of his white audiences—and the injustices of their forebears.

As Art in America has written: “Native Americans quickly learned that language was a weapon to be used against them. However, in Heap of Birds’s work, the blade has turned around. He cuts, dismembers, or reverses the English language.” The artist’s linguistic projects have ranged from large agit-prop style public art messages found on billboards and buses, to serigraph prints scaled for the gallery or museum wall. Heap of Birds stresses the importance of engaging modern forms of communication. His public interventions have included mass-media venues such as the Spectacolor Light billboard in Times Square in New York City.

The artist works prolifically and in diverse fashion, employing a range of media. His pieces can be pointed in their message, or playful and gestural. The artist’s “wall lyrics,” such as the recent Salt River Road series on view here, are chance, oblique references to daily experience. Heap of Birds’s brightly-colored Neuf series—lithographic prints—abstractly reference the gesture, shape and color of the wooded canyons of the Cheyenne and Arapaho reservation lands of Oklahoma. An additional inspiration is the multi-colored fish of the ocean tropics, where Heap of Birds enjoys the underwater wilderness.

In addition, the artist has for many years created site-specific public art installations. Combining sharp irony and a reversal of expectations, he has worked to lay bare the long-erased and usually brutal tribal history in each location he has worked. Numerous such projects have included: Native Hosts (City Hall Park, New York, NY, 1988); Building Minnesota (Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1991); Mission Gifts (San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California, 1991); and Dunging the Ground (Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut, 1996-1999). The artist’s most recent public art commission, Wheel (2004), a large sculptural installation exploring the story of Colorado’s past and present Native American population, is sited at the Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado.

Dan Younger
Director
Olin Art Gallery

Eagles Speak

HOCK E AYE VI Edgar Heap of Birds, American Leagues, lithograph, 1999

HOCK E AYE VI Edgar Heap of Birds, Neuf series, lithograph, 1997