Edgar Heap of Birds, Reclaim New York

Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne/Arapaho)
Edgar Heap of Birds (b.1954) received his Master of Fine Arts from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1979, his Bachelor of Fine Arts from The University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas in 1976 and has undertaken graduate studies at The Royal College of Art, London, England. Heap of Birds has taught as Visiting Professor at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island and Michaelis School of Art, University of Cape Town, South Africa. At the University of Oklahoma, Heap of Birds teaches in Native American Studies and Fine Arts. His seminars explore issues of the contemporary artist on local, national and international bases. He has served as a visiting lecturer in London, England, Western Samoa, Chiang Mai and Bangkok, Thailand, Johannesburg, South Africa, Barcelona, Spain, Belfast, Northern Ireland, Norrkoping, Sweden, Hararre, Zimbabwe and Adelaide, Australia.

The works of Heap of Birds include multi-disciplinary forms of public art messages, large scale drawings, Neuf Series acrylic paintings, prints and monumental porcelain enamel on steel outdoor sculpture. In the past decade, Heap of Birds has traveled around the world conducting research into the similarities of icons used by indigenous peoples in Australia, Africa, North and South America and Europe. He has continued to explore the relationships between his country’s living native cultures, contemporary society, history, and indigenous cultures from other continents. During this quest, he participated in residency programs in a variety of venues, including a local library in Providence with a strong Cape Verdian community and at the Chariho School near the Narragansett Indian Reservation of Richmond, Rhode Island. While in Cape Town for his show at the AVA, Heap of Birds took part in a residency at the Greatmore Artists’ Studios in Woodstock where he held a small showing of some of his earlier works referencing billboards and signs in the USA. Heap of Birds’ art work was chosen by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian as their entry towards the competition for the United States Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale where he represented NMAI with a major collateral public art project in Venice, June 2007.

Currently, Heap of Birds is faculty at Oklahoma University with a joint appointment in Native Studies and the Art Department. He has shown his art throughout the world and created numerous site-specific projects. His public projects have tended to draw attention to living native culture and the impact of history on the contemporary relationships between native and mainstream cultures. These works frequently make use of native symbols combined with the form and language of today’s public culture – signage, billboards, buses, etc