03.13.2004 | 04.25.2004
BLOOD | FAYE HEAVYSHIELD

HeavyShield uses memory as one of the most important elements in her creative process, through which she maps out a territory whose signposts consist of knowing how to speak the Blackfoot language, …and of feeling why there is beauty in an animal’s gaze.  She uses those cultural signposts as mnemonic devices to bring into visual being objects which are to her fragments of reality as they actually appear without the traditional and familiar conventions of perception.  The world of a traveler in time and space, an observer of non-linear dimensions, has to have a practical method of expression.

– Robert Houle

Faye HeavyShield is a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy from the Kainaiwa (Blood) Nation in the foothills of southern Alberta. For this exhibition, HeavyShield has created four new works that look specifically at the various connotations of the show’s title – blood red, blood ties,… – creating works that evoke memories, both cultural and collective. Her works draw from personal responses to history and heritage, in turn providing both a conceptual and personal connection to the past and her own ancestry. HeavyShield’s minimalist forms are often a metaphor for the human body. Arranged in circles, spirals and lines, her sculptures suggest familial structures and groupings of individuals in conversation and engaged in activity.

…figures suspended from the ceiling suggest multiple ambiguities of dance between land and sky, between permanence and fragility, between past and future.  While the quantity of suspension carries many metaphorical qualities, the physical movement of the figures is an integral element, as it is to the dance. Multiple layers of paint applied to the canvas ensures lightness and mobility, properties important also for easy transport of the teepee, whose shape the hooded forms resemble…

– excerpted from Mapping Our Territories, curatorial essay by Lee-Ann Martin

The formal qualities of Faye HeavyShield’s work are balanced by a strong sensitivity to materials, both in her understanding of their physical properties and within her consideration for the cultural associations that they convey. The variety of approaches and techniques employed by HeavyShield, ranging from sculptural installation to site-specific wall drawings, not only exemplify the wide scope of her artistic practice, but further address her intent to explore, by any means, the multiple associations that blood presents.  While the respective works that constitute this exhibition take on a number of forms, collectively they offer a poignant example of the artist’s personal conviction to develop connections between history and community, linking the past with the present.

For over a decade HeavyShield’s highly acclaimed work has been exhibited across Canada in exhibitions such as: Land, Spirit, Power, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario; New Territories, 350/500 Years After, Les Maisons de la Culture, Montreal, Quebec; Heart, Hoof, Horn, Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta; and Nations in Urban Landscapes. Most recently HeavyShield exhibited body of land at the Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna British Columbia and in Mapping Our Territories at the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, Alberta. Her work is found in numerous collections in Canada and the United States including the Glenbow Museum, the Heard Museum and the National Gallery of Canada. She lives in Lethbridge and on the Blood Reserve in Southern Alberta.