Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds - Earthly Observatory

Artists

Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds

eheapofbirds.com

Native Hosts for Chicago, 2021
Metal sign panels

In his ongoing site-specific series, Native Hosts, Heap of Birds (Cheyenne and Arapaho Nation) uses the visual language of institutional signage to invert power relations and reaffirm native groups’ historical occupation of land. By reversing a location’s colonially-established place names in sites throughout North America, Heap of Birds defamiliarizes and destabilizes them and then makes the native tribes of that area the hosts to the viewer.

A duplicate set of these three signs are installed outside of one of the School’s buildings at 280 S. Columbus Drive. Often casually referred to as the “Columbus Building,” SAIC’s Native American Student Association (NASA) and others have recently called for it to renamed in acknowledgement of the “Council of Three Fires” that signifies three tribes— the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi—that lived together on these lands before being decimated and forcibly displaced by European settlement.

Courtesy of the artist.

Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds - Native Hosts for Chicago

Native Hosts for Chicago

Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds -

Photo by Kaitlyn Albrecht.

The artworks of Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds include multi-disciplinary forms of public art messages, large scale drawings, Neuf Series acrylic paintings, prints, works in glass and monumental porcelain enamel on steel outdoor sculpture.

Heap of Birds’ artistic creations and efforts as an advocate for Indigenous communities worldwide are focused first upon social justice and then personal freedom to live within the tribal circle as an expressive individual.

The artist has studied at the University of Kansas, Lawrence (BFA, 1976), undertaken graduate studies at the Royal College of Art, London (1977) and attended the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia (MFA, 1979). He was named USA Ford Fellow in 2012 and Distinguished Alumni, University of Kansas, in 2014. Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts and Letters degrees have been awarded by the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston (2008), Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver, Canada (2017), and California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, (2018). His artwork has been collected by the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.