Reconciliation: Drawing with Reaction, Insight and Resolution
June 15, 2016
2:30 – 5:30 pm
Riddell Hall, The University of Winnipeg
Join Cheyenne artist and professor Edgar Heap of Birds in a free participatory workshop that will result in a large-scale collaborative drawing. This event is part of the Pathways to Reconciliation conference being held at The University of Winnipeg. Members of the community are welcome to participate. This workshop is one of three public consultations toward the potential installation of Heap of Birds' Native Hosts public artworks at the University which acknowledge Indigenous territory. For more information on the project and the other consultations, please visit this web page.
The theme of the collective artwork will be issues stemming from social justice, accurate First Nations history, personal stories, healing and reconciliation. An artistic exploration is often an enriching method to discover hidden emotions and histories involving difficult policies and topics.
Heap of Birds, noted for his international artistic efforts using language, will begin the large drawing with a text based image from his vantage point of visiting tribal member, Traditional Cheyenne Warrior Society Leader and empathetic world artist. All participants will then begin to add their own expressive insights formed by words of different sizes, fonts and meanings. Text will become image and visual form as well as an intellectual landscape of sensations.
All participants are welcome to join in to contribute with this open and creative event, which utilizes seven foot by ten foot, high quality rag paper and jumbo black art markers.
The drawing will be completed during our session together. We will hang/install the drawing and offer our evaluations of the expression. As we examine the piece we can share interpretations of the text-based sentiments, thus learning from one another and offering progress together towards reconciliation.
This unique opportunity is sponsored by The University of Winnipeg’s Gallery 1C03 and Office of the Associate Vice-President of Indigenous Affairs and Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art.
The workshop is free, but pre-registration is requested. To register, email Gallery 1C03 Director/Curator Jennifer Gibson or call 204-786-9253.
About the Artist
Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds works in multiple media, having shown his paintings, drawings, prints, and text-based conceptual works in numerous countries. Heap of Birds roots his practice in Cheyenne spirituality and an indigenous way of seeing and being in the world. 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.
Heap of Birds received his Master of Fine Arts from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1979), his Bachelor of Fine Arts from The University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas (1976) and has undertaken graduate studies at The Royal College of Art, London, England. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degree from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, Massachusetts (2008).
Museums that have exhibited his works include The Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, National Museum of the American Indian, The National Gallery of Canada, Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, Documenta, Germany, Orchard Gallery, Northern Ireland, Association for Visual Arts Museum, South Africa, Hong Kong Art Center, Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia, Grand Palais, Paris, and the Venice Biennale, Italy.