Faye HeavyShield, I’ll know you when I see you (detail), 2021. © Faye HeavyShield. Installation view, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. Photo: SITE Photography
Located on Level 2, Bennett #229, Ungerman #230, Jennings Young #231
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Faye Heavyshield, recipient of the 2021 Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO, has for more than three decades created powerful installations and sculptures, characterized by repeating forms and motifs, including spirals, circles, grids, and lines. Drawing from personal experience, her work reveals a deep relationship with the land, in particular the Kainai (Blood) Nation in Southern Alberta where she grew up and where she still lives.
For her first solo exhibition at the AGO, Heavyshield will present several works, including a re-staging of her acclaimed 1995–96 multimedia installation Venus as Torpedo. This large-scale installation, with audio in both Blackfoot and English, features assorted clothing items draped over a protruding arm that extends across the museum floor.
This exhibition is curated by Georgiana Uhlyarik, Fredrik S. Eaton Curator of Canadian Art, AGO, and organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario in partnership with the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation.
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
Faye HeavyShield has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including Nations in Urban Landscapes at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver; rock paper river at Gallery Connexion, Fredericton; Into the Garden of Angels at The Power Plant in Toronto; kuto’iis (blood) at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery; the 2005 Alberta Art Biennial; Hearts of our People: Native Women Artists, at the Minneapolis Institute of Art; and Clans, at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. Institutions that house her work include the National Gallery of Canada; the McMichael Canadian Art Collection; the Alberta Foundation of Art; the Glenbow Museum; the Heard Museum; the Eiteljorg Museum of Native American Art and Western Art; the MacKenzie Art Gallery and the Kelowna Art Gallery. She is the recipient of an Eiteljorg Native American Contemporary Art Fellowship and received the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award in 2021.
