Outside Voice

IN 1981, AFTER living on the East Coast and in Europe, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds left behind what many consider the world’s cultural hubs for Oklahoma tribal and ancestral lands. There he started a daily painting practice that became the Neuf series, referencing the Cheyenne word for meaning and ritual around the number four. The vibrant acrylic shapes with serrated edges were inspired by the wooded canyons around his mother’s home. Neufs for Oklahoma Autumn, the latest in this series, is monumental—two half-size, hand-painted basketball courts—and open to the public alongside his Honor Song retrospective at Oklahoma Contemporary which includes several outdoor installations of his work.

“The paintings came before the public art because that’s where I found my own comfort zone with abstraction,” Heap of Birds says. “Living on the land for ten years in seclusion on top of this canyon, that led to having the strength to speak out in more of a politicized way because it came from the sovereign land.”

The courts, with their sunset hues, have backboards that are part of his long-running Native Hosts series, recognizing tribes that have historically lived in the area, with its current name printed in reverse. Nearby is a circle of forty of these signs for Oklahoma’s thirty-nine tribal nations (with Cheyenne and Arapaho, of which he is a citizen, represented individually).

Mel Willis

“This is our first-ever campus-wide retrospective exhibition for an artist,” says director of exhibitions AnnaVittoria Pickett. “It has the narrative of his career and Edgar as a collaborator, teacher, and somebody who likes to share with the community. The basketball courts do all of those things.”

Acting as a scoreboard is a re-creation of one of his earliest projects using public art messages to confront colonization, created in 1982 for Times Square’s Spectacolor light board. At the museum entrances are his Trail of Tears signs, where seemingly ordinary steel parking signs commemorate this forced displacement.

Although these installations all have Heap of Birds’ evocative use of language and material, always challenging expectations for Indigenous contemporary art, they also reflect his personal passion for gathering, particularly through games of basketball.

“He loves what it does for the community in bringing people together,” Pickett says. “And he is essentially gifting the courts to the community for the next year to use for free whenever they want. It has a lot to do with what Edgar’s practice is about, which is truly standing up for underserved and underrepresented communities, but also being himself and not wanting to be put into a box.” – ALLISON MEIER