Edgar Heap of Birds’s brightly-colored Neuf series (“Neuf” is the Cheyenne word for “four”) abstractly reference the gesture, shape, and color of the wooded canyons of his ancestral home, the Cheyenne and Arapaho reservation lands of Oklahoma, as well as the multi-colored fish of the ocean tropics.
Multiplied: Editioned Works from The Fabric Workshop and Museum
September 9, 2013-October 28, 2013
Echoes and Reverberations
November 1, 2019-March 16, 2020
Narrative Terrain: Landscape as Storytelling
May 3, 2022-October 23, 2022
American, born 1954, lives in Oklahoma.
Cheyenne-Arapaho artist Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds earned his MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University (1979) and his BFA from The University of Kansas (1976). In 2007, the National Museum of the American Indian invited Heap of Birds to participate in the Venice Biennale. His project, Most Serene Republics, was located throughout Venice and honored the warriors who were coerced into performing in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, specifically those who died while the show toured Europe. In addition, the artist has exhibited work at The Museum of Modern Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, New York, New York; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia; and Documenta, Kassel, Germany. He has received awards from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Rockefeller Foundation, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, The Wallace Foundation, the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, and The Pew Charitable Trusts. Heap of Birds has taught as a Visiting Professor at Yale University, Rhode Island School of Design, and Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, South Africa. He presently teaches Native American Studies and Fine Arts at the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, OK.