Edgar Heap of Birds, Imagining our Future Series

November 13, 2013
Edgar Heap of Birds, Imagining Our Future Series
Heads Above Grass; Provocative Native American Public Art and Studio Fine Art Practice

Edgar Heap of Birds is an internationally known artist and scholar of Cheyenne and Arapaho descent whose work engages with issues of history, public space and land claims. We have invited him to share his insights on how site-specific creative works generate ways of knowing and understanding that respect and acknowledge ever-present Indigenous histories and their relationship to place. Heap of Birds’ contribution will help us to realize the importance of making our building and institution accountable to place. His practice and scholarship address questions of community and contexts that form a valuable reference point in imagining the new art/media/design university, particularly the new forms of practice that we will need to imagine in the new university.

This lecture is part of our series Imagining Our Future, which examines the geographical, historical, and cultural context of our university’s anticipated move further east in Sen’ákw (the False Creek Flats). Through speakers, workshops, artistic interventions and other forms, the series will explore the relationship between our proposed campus and the land on which it will be built, the communities that surround it, the historical and urban context of the site, and its promise to become a central element in a new creative and cultural district in the City of Vancouver.