Artist Talk: Faye HeavyShield

About the artist

Faye HeavyShield (b. 1953) is a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy from the Kainai (Blood) First Nation and she lives and works on her community’s reserve in the foothills of southern Alberta. Over the course of her four-decade career, she has created multidisciplinary work that explores notions of identity, family, and place. Her pared-down, minimal forms bring together complex and layered references, including to her Kainai heritage, the environment of her homeland, and personal memories.

HeavyShield was trained at the Alberta College of Art and Design and at the University of Calgary. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across North America, including at landmark shows Land, Spirit, Power at the National Gallery of Canada and Nations in Urban Landscape at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver. Her work can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the McMichael Museum, Alberta Foundation of Art, the Glenbow Museum, Heard Museum, the Kelowna Art Gallery, and the MacKenzie Art Gallery.

In 2022, HeavyShield received one of Canada’s top art prizes, an award from the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation and the Art Gallery of Ontario. That same year the artist’s first retrospective, The Art of Faye HeavyShield, opened at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina.