Edgar Heap of Birds
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Duke University Press
Published:25th Sep '15
Should be back in stock very soon
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£85.00(9780822359814)
For over three decades, contemporary Native American artist Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds has pursued a disciplined practice in multiple media, having shown his paintings, drawings, prints, and text-based conceptual art throughout numerous national and international galleries and public spaces. In the first book-length study of this important artist, Bill Anthes analyzes Heap of Birds's art and politics in relation to the international contemporary art scene, Native American history, and settler colonialism. Foregrounding how Heap of Birds roots his practice in Cheyenne spirituality and an indigenous way of seeing and being in the world, Anthes describes how Heap of Birds likens his art to "sharp rocks"—weapons delivering trenchant critiques of the loss of land, life, and autonomy endured by Native Americans. Whether appearing as interventions in public spaces or in a gallery, Heap of Birds's carefully honed artworks pose questions about time, modernity, identity, power, and the meaning and value of contemporary art in a global culture.
"Edgar Heap of Birds is a productive step toward disavowing the distinction between 'native' and 'contemporary' experiences." -- Maggie Wander * AlterNative *
"Anthes organizes Heap of Birds’s public art and gallery work into four thematic chapters—'Land,' 'Words,' 'Histories,' and 'Generations'—building an argument that each series contributes to a broad project of asserting indigenous sovereignty and renewing indigenous community. In so doing, Anthes shows the inherently Native world view that motivates the artist’s work without compromising its contemporaneity. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers." -- E. Hutchinson * Choice *
"Anthes is painstaking . . . in his grounding of Heap of Birds's art in Indigenous perspectives on colonial and post-colonial North America and in his documentation of the complex historical intersections marked by his many site-specific works. . . . Heap of Birds's work remains intensely relevant as elucidations of Native American history written as Native Americans know it." -- Emily E. Auger * Canadian Journal of Native Studies *
"Generously illustrated with around a hundred images, most in color, Anthes’s study is a must for anyone interested in political art, contemporary art, and Indigenous studies. In fact, it is the best single study of Heap of Birds to date." -- Dean Rader * Journal of American Studies *
"Anthes’s richly illustrated text begins to take to heart Heap of Birds’s challenge to the writing of history, illuminating the moments in which the artworks themselves write their own histories. . . . The book models itself after Heap of Birds’s own practice, using meticulous research and wit to gesture to the power of the symbolic and unearth the voices that history has attempted to suppress." -- Jessica Landau * Native American and Indigenous Studies *
ISBN: 9780822359944
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 454g
232 pages