Entering CUAG’s (Carleton University Art Gallery’s) exhibit The Art of Faye Heavyshield, it is hard not to be immediately captivated by the striking simplicity and intricate layers of the work. At first glance, it might seem that the primary collection is tucked away on the gallery's second floor. Instead of rushing upstairs to confirm this, exploring both levels reveals the minimalist pieces in all their subtle brilliance. This experience proves to be immensely gratifying.
Faye Heavyshield is an artist from Kainai First Nations who specializes in sculpture and installation pieces. She grew up on the Blood Reserve in Alberta, Canada. Twenty-six year old Heavyshield began her career as an artist at the Alberta College of Art in 1980, combining various materials in her work, including bone, grass and wood. As she describes in a direct quote on the National Gallery website, her current artistic practice has emerged from experiences such as skinning a deer with her father (which her mother later prepared into a meal), witnessing the imagery of Jesus Christ on the cross, as well as witnessing architecture of old homes such as teepees. From this collision of visceral shapes and imagery, what has emerged is a process of building up the surface of a work to peel back its pieces later, or as she writes, “layers.” Heavyshield’s work requires a careful, curious and patient eye, determined to give the pieces a second, if not third, look over. Her work embodies the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, questioning the place of Indigenous cultural materials in gallery and museum spaces.
The exhibit comes from the Mackenzie Art Gallery (Saskatchewan) and was first displayed in 2019. This project is led by Felicia Gay, a curatorial fellow at the Mackenzie Art Gallery, who has worked as a curator since 2004 and 2005. She has been awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Aboriginal Curatorial Residency with AKA Artist-Run in Saskatoon, SK. This exhibit has since toured several galleries in Canada, including the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Working from a large and diverse collection of works, Felicia Gay constructs an exhibit that merges pivotal moments of Heavyshield’s career. The exhibit spans two floors, with each floor holding pieces produced over decades. The first floor reaches from the thin spiral of wave near the entrance on the lower floor, to the red wall composed of cloth and paint titled kutoyis to the large kite-shaped hanging canvas and bead piece Aapaskaiyaawa, amongst many others. From the top of the stairs on the second floor you are met with a video of Felicia Gay’s interview of Faye Heavyshield, followed by several pieces including outlandish, small figures of women made from digital prints on paper, pieces on canvas such as survive (1985), and finally what seems to be one of the centrepieces for the exhibit, red dress (the other being Aapaskaiyaawa or they are dancing).
While the work on display in The Art of Faye Heavyshield spans several decades and mediums, the spirit of the exhibit leans on the sentiment of finding animation in works on display in a museum. Felicia Gay expresses this in her commentary on red dress in the exhibit’s pamphlet. This can be observed upon a closer inspection of each piece, which reveals some form of motion, the use of unanticipated materials, and the opportunity to, quite literally, hear the thoughts of the artist herself, imbuing Faye Heavyshield into the exhibit.
Felicia Gay writes, in large lettering printed on the wall towards the entrance of the exhibit, “Stories, if they choose, may go beyond the aural and into the visual, but stories they remain.” This thought is true of the exhibit as a whole. Each piece, in its own right, is a story captured in visuals and transcends its visual depiction. They contain stories of the importance of connection to land and water for the Blackfoot people, the impact of settler colonialism on natural systems in Blackfoot territory, to a fluid ancestral presence that she visually represented in Aapaskaiyaawa (They Are Dancing). Felicia Gay writes that these folded canvas shapes visually represent Indigenous ancestors opening an invitation to visit them.
In the same introductory note, Gay writes, "Story is a process that occurs long before it is recognizable to the storyteller. It is a process that often involves a folding and refolding.” There is a physicality to this statement as well. Much of Heavyshield’s work in this exhibit is composed of a first image printed and folded into a new shape and a new image. Even before this physical folding, a sentiment and story are pressed and folded to this image in Heavyshield’s artistic practice.
Leaving the exhibit, one feels as though one’s relationship with art has changed. There is now an intense desire to look for the depth in simplicity, and the simplicity in chaos. Heavyshield and Gay have graced the exhibit’s attendees with vulnerability, in the hope that they will, in turn, handle this with care and personally question Canadian gallery and museum spaces’ fraught past and present with Indigenous cultural materials. The Faye Heavyshield exhibit navigates us through Heavyshield’s relationship with Blackfoot cultural history and practices and her ties to a country that has never ceased being a colonial enterprise.