Edgar Heap of Birds (MFA ‘79) is set to exhibit new and older works in a solo show, Edgar Heap of Birds: Punctures, starting Friday, Jan. 21 at K Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. K Art Gallery is one of the few Native American-owned commercial art spaces. The show will feature mono prints and ghost prints, paintings from his Neuf series, and pieces from his celebrated Native Hosts series.  

Heap of Birds is a multi-disciplinary artist and activist from the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Western Oklahoma. His style is one that references his rich cultural history with vibrant, moving colors. His paintings embody landscape and movement that pay homage to his Cheyenne heritage. His Punctures series feature mono prints with bright primary colors from the first pull from the printing plate, while the ghost prints, a more subdued color palette, are from the second plate pull.  

Of this series, Heap of Birds says, “[T]he primary mono prints are strong, bright, and bold, thus articulating the way Indigenous life develops, grows, and survives in spite of the American empire. The faint color, blurred text, and sometimes obscured image treatment of the ghost mono prints represent the United States of America’s refusal to accept Native Indigenous Nations, their history, and the brutal holocaust perpetrated on our Nations by the ruling republic.” 

Along with various exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker Art Center, and the British Musuem, Heap of Birds is also a fan of public art interventions. His Native Hosts series has been an ongoing installation over the last two decades. The implementation of “host” signs intends to honor indigenous citizens and seek to educate non-Native people who live on Native lands unknowingly. “[A]s in any proper decorum it is fitting, before one proceeds in life, to properly recognize one’s host,” Heap of Birds notes. 

Click here for visitor information from K Art Gallery. 

Photo credit, An NDN Home, 2018 by Edgar Heap of Birds