Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds: HONOR SONG

Overview

Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds: HONOR SONG

January 30 - October 20, 2025

Mary LeFlore Clements Oklahoma Gallery

Associated Exhibitions

Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds: Neufs for Oklahoma Autumn
April 24, 2024 - April 13, 2026
Campbell Art Park

Admission is always free; tickets are not required

Oklahoma Contemporary presented the first major retrospective of Oklahoma City-based artist Edgar Heap of Birds (b. 1954, Wichita, Kansas; Cheyenne and Arapaho Nation), who is known internationally for conceptual artwork that addresses Indigenous rights, sovereignty, and relationships to place. Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds: HONOR SONG was a landmark for American art, for the region, and for the city: the artist’s first institutional survey in his home-state of the last forty years. The exhibition spanned over four decades of art production, tracing Heap of Birds’s trajectory from the 1970s to the present through colorful prints, abstract paintings, drawings, glassworks, sculptures, and public works.

The campus-wide installation took over Oklahoma Contemporary’s indoor galleries and outdoor spaces, and included archival materials, original printing plates, and new works commissioned for a workshop in the fall leading up to the show that was part of Getty's Paper Project initiative for curatorial innovation in the graphic arts. The totality of work revealed a through-line: Heap of Birds harnesses conceptual art approaches to address the treatment of Native American communities and advocate for the agency of Indigenous identity toward stewardship of the earth we all share.

Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds: HONOR SONG featured the artist’s signature text-based prints involving urgent messages that highlight issues, figures, and events distinct to Indigeneity, yet that also speak to universal human conditions. These monotype works are often saturated with deep hues and accompanied by fainter “ghost prints” executed from a second pull enlisting the use of varied colors of paper. Heap of Birds explained, “the primary prints represent who we are as Native people: bright, vibrant, strong, clear;” while the “ghost prints’” allude to how marginalized Indigenous people are believed to be “gone, like ghosts.” Presented by the dozens in massive, overwhelming grids, these “wall lyrics” convey the relentless march of history and the depths of pain and joy experienced by many on this land over time. For Heap of Birds, form advances content.

Mixed-media projects relating to Heap of Birds’s public interventions were a highlight of the exhibition. Since the 1980s, the artist has appropriated the civic language of traffic signs and wayfinding to create site-specific works that make visible the unexamined histories of a given place. Charged by forms that convey municipal authority, Heap of Birds’s public works call out tribal nations erased from lands we inhabit, delivering powerful commentary on the treatment of Indigenous communities. For Heap of Birds, public signs are a space for meditating on who is given a voice.

Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds: HONOR SONG provided, for many, the first opportunity to see the artist’s ongoing, yet lesser-known, abstract acrylic paintings. Begun as a daily practice in 1981, when Heap of Birds moved to Oklahoma tribal and ancestral lands, the “imagery” in his paintings involves repeated and layered diagonal shapes of color with jagged edges that seem to vibrate with earthly energy. Titled Neuf, the Cheyenne language word for performing actions in sets of four, each composition is shaped formally by the ritually and cosmologically significant tetrad, regardless of scale or where the artist created the painting. Exhibition co-curator, Pablo Barrera noted, “For Heap of Birds, the practice of painting—especially when he is traveling the globe—becomes an enactment of cultural sovereignty.”

Featuring over 500 art objects in various media loaned from collections across the country, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds: HONOR SONG, was accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with critical essays, providing audiences and researchers an opportunity to, for the first time, consider the breadth of a ground-breaking American artist. Along with never-before presented ephemera from the artist’s studio, the expansive exhibition made evident the ways in which Edgar Heap of Birds has utilized color, text, place, and the language of abstraction to reconstruct histories and advance the rights of people and land.

Selected Artworks

EDGARH1 — *Portrait of Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds*.

Edgar Heap of Birds carousel5 — **Edgar Heap of Birds**, *Most Serene Republics*, 2007.

Edgar Heap of Birds carousel4 — **Edgar Heap of Birds**, *Untitled*, 2007.

Edgar Heap of Birds carousel3 — **Edgar Heap of Birds**, *Ma-ka’ta l-na’-zin (One Who Stands on the Earth)*, 1990.

Edgar Heap of Birds carousel2 — **Edgar Heap of Birds**, *American League*, 1994.

Edgar Heap of Birds carousel — **Edgar Heap of Birds**, *Was Told 12 Times*, 2022.

HEAP OF BIRDS Edgar Water Bird — **Edgar Heap of Birds**, *Water Bird*, 1973.

EHOB Web Headers6 — **Edgar Heap of Birds**, *Water is Your Only Medicine*, 2020.

EHOB Web Headers5 — **Edgar Heap of Birds**, *Water is Your Only Medicine*, 2020.

EHOB Web Headers2 — **Edgar Heap of Birds**, *Places of Healing*, 2020.

EHOB Web Headers — **Edgar Heap of Birds**, *Places of Healing*, 2020.

EHOB Web Banner 2024 11 12 200420 qahk — **Edgar Heap of Birds**, *Neuf*, 1995.

About the Artist

Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds kneels on ceremonial grounds — **Edgar Heap of Birds**. Portrait by Ted West on ceremonial grounds west of Geary, Oklahoma.

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.

Events

Two half-size basketball courts painted in bright, abstract designs

Workshop

Scratch the Surface

October 11-13, 2024

Learn More

Shop

Bill Anthes x Edgar Heap of Birds

Edgar Heap of Birds Jersey

Support

Organization

Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds: Honor Song is organized by Oklahoma Contemporary Adjunct Curator Pablo Barrera (Wixáritari) and Director of Exhibitions AnnaVittoria Pickett with the artist.

Images

Edgar Heap of Birds, Neuf, 1995. Acrylic on canvas. 89 x 105 in. The John and Susan Horseman Collection, Courtesy of the Horseman Foundation.. © Edgar Heap of Birds. Image courtesy of the artist.
Edgar Heap of Birds. Portrait by Ted West on ceremonial grounds west of Geary, Oklahoma.
Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, Installation view 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.
National Endowment for the Arts logo. . Provided by National Endowment for the Arts.
Portrait of Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds. Edgar Heap of Birds. Portrait by Ted West on ceremonial grounds west of Geary, Oklahoma. Image courtesy of the artist.. Image courtesy of the artist.
Edgar Heap of Birds, Most Serene Republics, 2007. Banner installed at Marco Polo International Airport, Venice, Italy.. 72 x 216 in. Made for Most Serene Republics, 2007, exhibition on the occasion of the 52nd Venice Biennial in collaboration with the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Private collection. . © Edgar Heap of Birds. Image courtesy of the artist.
Edgar Heap of Birds, Untitled, 2007. Murano glass. 16 x 14 x 14 in. Made for Most Serene Republics, 2007, exhibition on the occasion of the 52nd Venice Biennial in collaboration with the. National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. . © Edgar Heap of Birds. Image courtesy of the artist.
Edgar Heap of Birds, Ma-ka’ta l-na’-zin (One Who Stands on the Earth), 1990. Enamel on steel panel. 18 x 36 1/8 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Edith C. Blum Fund, 2015. © Edgar Heap of Birds. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Edgar Heap of Birds, American League, 1994. Serigraph. 36 x 60 in. Tia Collection, Santa Fe. © Edgar Heap of Birds. Image courtesy of the artist.
Edgar Heap of Birds, Was Told 12 Times, 2022. 12 monoprints on paper. Each panel, 22 x 15 inches. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance ad Greta Millikin Trust, 2023.8.1-12. Image courtesy of the artist. © Edgar Heap of Birds. Image courtesy of the artist.
Edgar Heap of Birds, Water Bird, 1973. Acrylic on canvas. 60 x 48 in. Collection of Margaret Heap of Birds. © Edgar Heap of Birds. Image courtesy of the artist.
Edgar Heap of Birds, Water is Your Only Medicine, 2020. 24 monoprints and 24 ghost prints on paper. Each panel, 30 x 22 in. Collection of Remai Modern. Purchased with the support of the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation, 2023. © Edgar Heap of Birds. Image courtesy of the artist.
Edgar Heap of Birds, Water is Your Only Medicine, 2020. 24 monoprints and 24 ghost prints on paper. Each panel, 30 x 22 in. Collection of Remai Modern. Purchased with the support of the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation, 2023. © Edgar Heap of Birds. Image courtesy of the artist.
Edgar Heap of Birds, Places of Healing, 2020. 24 monoprints and 24 ghost prints on paper. Each panel, 30 x 22 in. Tate Modern, Tate Americas Foundation. . © Edgar Heap of Birds. Image courtesy of the artist.
Edgar Heap of Birds, Places of Healing, 2020. 24 monoprints and 24 ghost prints on paper. Each panel, 30 x 22 in. Tate Modern, Tate Americas Foundation. © Edgar Heap of Birds. Image courtesy of the artist.
Edgar Heap of Birds, Neuf, 1995. Acrylic on canvas. 89 x 105 in. The John and Susan Horseman Collection, Courtesy of the Horseman Foundation.. © Edgar Heap of Birds. Image courtesy of the artist.