Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds: Neufs for Oklahoma Autumn
Overview
Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds: Neufs for Oklahoma Autumn
April 24, 2024 - April 13, 2026Campbell Art Park
Associated Exhibitions
Admission is always free; tickets are not required
Oklahoma Contemporary is honored to present Neufs for Oklahoma Autumn, a basketball court installation commissioned as a public art iteration of the Neuf painting series (1981–ongoing) by renowned artist Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne and Arapaho Nation). Neufs for Oklahoma Autumn, composed of imagery inspired by Oklahoma tribal lands, is on view in Campbell Art Park and presented as part of the spring 2025 exhibition Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds: HONOR SONG, the inaugural retrospective for the visionary artist’s lauded forty-year career.
The site-specific Neufs for Oklahoma Autumn presents an intriguing installment in Heap of Birds’s ongoing Neuf series in the form of hand-painted, public basketball courts, shedding light on the importance of these lesser-known abstract acrylic paintings. Begun as a daily practice in 1981, when he moved to reservation lands in Oklahoma, the “imagery” in Heap of Birds’s Neuf paintings is his signature rendition of the wooded canyons surrounding his mother’s home. These works feature repeated and layered diagonal shapes of color that seem to vibrate with jagged edges, suggesting an earthly energy. Titled Neuf, the Cheyenne word for the ritually and cosmologically significant symbolism surrounding the number four, each composition is shaped formally by the deep meaning of the tetrad, regardless of scale or where the artist was when he created it. Heap of Birds notes, “These works are about sovereignty and landscape, and they speak to the issues of homeland and beauty.” For Heap of Birds, the practice of painting—even when he is traveling around the globe—is an enactment of cultural sovereignty.
The courts’ flanking backboards will contain commissioned elements of Heap of Birds’s second longest-running body of work, the Native Hosts public art series, in which the artist installs signs honoring the Native tribes who have historically inhabited the region, emphatically declaring them enduring hosts. This monumental commission combines two immensely important decades-long bodies of work for the first time in a meaningful way near the artist’s own tribal reservation lands. The courts’ “scoreboard” will recreate Heap of Birds’s 1982 work featured in Messages to the Public, an artist project organized by Jane Dickson through the Public Art Fund using the Spectacolor light board in Times Square.
Presented in collaboration with the artist, Project Backboard, and Common Practice in association and concurrent with Hock E Aye HJVi Edgar Heap of Birds: HONOR SONG, Neufs for Oklahoma Autumn will draw audiences beyond typical art-settings and serve as a literal canvas for dialogue, site for contemplation, and platform for storytelling: connecting histories, traditions, narratives. The large-scale, functional versions of his painting series will stand as a powerful testament to the intersection of sports, culture, and identity in our state, inviting engagement with Campbell Art Park in unprecedented ways.
Selected Artworks
Related Media
About the Artist
Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds (b. 1954, Wichita, Kansas) is a multidisciplinary artist and citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nation, for which he serves as headsman of the Elk Scraper Warrior Society, instructing ceremony on tribal lands near Geary, Oklahoma.
He received his BFA from the University of Kansas (1976), undertook graduate studies in painting at the Royal College of Art, London (1977), and received an MFA from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University (1979).
Heap of Birds has participated in over 200 national and international exhibitions since the early 1980s, and his works are part of museum collections worldwide. He has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award (2024), and induction as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2020).
From 1988 to 2018, Heap of Birds was a professor at the University of Oklahoma and served as visiting lecturer in over 14 countries, which includes being invited to teach at institutions ranging from Yale University to Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, South Africa. He continues to live, work, and mentor in Oklahoma City.
Images
- Edgar Heap of Birds. © Photo by Ted West.
- Edgar Heap of Birds, Installation View Neufs for Hawai’i, 2022. Murray Park basketball court, Long Island City, NY. . © Photo by John Dennis. Courtesy of MoMA PS1 and Common Practice.
- Edgar Heap of Birds, Basketball inspired by Neufs for Oklahoma Autumn.. Basketball. Basketball inspired by Neufs for Oklahoma Autumn. Designed by Common Practice.
- Edgar Heap of Birds, Artist next to Neuf, 1995. Courtesy of the St. Louis Museum of Art Museum Minority Artist Purchase Fund. Photo courtesy of the artist.
- Edgar Heap of Birds, Neuf for Oklahoma Autumn II, 1997. from Neuf series (1981—ongoing). Image courtesy of the artist.
- Edgar Heap of Birds, Installation View of Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds: Neufs for Oklahoma Autumn, 2025. site specific public work for Campbell Art Park basketball court, Oklahoma City. Detail views of Neufs for Oklahoma Autumn . Photos courtesy of Project Backboard and Common Practice.
- Edgar Heap of Birds, Installation View of Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds: Neufs for Oklahoma Autumn, 2025. site specific public work for Campbell Art Park basketball court, Oklahoma City. . Detail views of Neufs for Oklahoma Autumn. Photos courtesy of Project Backboard and Common Practice.
- Edgar Heap of Birds, Installation view of Neufs for Hawai’i, 2022. site specific public work for Murray Park basketball court, Long Island City, NY.. Courtesy of MoMA PS1 and Common Practice. Photo by Ross Dahmen.
- Edgar Heap of Birds, Installation views of Neufs for Oklahoma Autumn, 2025. site specific public work for Campbell Art Park basketball court, Oklahoma City. Photos courtesy of Project Backboard and Common Practice.
