Charlene Vickers

Faye HeavyShield

Each season, CAG releases a series of Video Visits that offer short takes on our exhibitions. Presented in five languages — Cantonese, English, French, Mandarin and Spanish — these videos present a variety of perspectives on the work of Charlene Vickers and Faye HeavyShield.
 
### English Video Visits
[Charlene Vickers: Ancestor Gesture](https://vimeo.com/644052137)
[Faye HeavyShield: New Work](https://vimeo.com/642458358)
 
### Visites vidéo en français
[Charlene Vickers: Ancestor Gesture](https://vimeo.com/642461676)
[Faye HeavyShield: New Work](https://vimeo.com/642459013)
 
### Visitas de video en español
[Charlene Vickers: Ancestor Gesture](https://vimeo.com/642461676)
[Faye HeavyShield: New Work](https://vimeo.com/642460285)
 
### 普通话视频之旅
[Charlene Vickers: Ancestor Gesture](https://vimeo.com/644053000)
[Faye HeavyShield: New Work](https://vimeo.com/642459702)
 
### 粵語視頻參觀
[Charlene Vickers: Ancestor Gesture](https://vimeo.com/644051423)
[Faye HeavyShield: New Work](https://vimeo.com/642460926)
 


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Fall 2021

Video Visits

Encompassing a wide range of media — including painting, sculpture, performance and installation — the practice of Charlene Vickers operates as a visionary expression of what the artist terms *embodied territory*. Giving vital form to the lands, histories and relations of her birthplace in Wauzhushk Onigum as they are felt, imagined and carried across distance, Vickers’ works lucidly manifest ancestral connections, cultural reclamations and her territorial presence as Anishinaabe Kwe, while responding formally to the Coast Salish land she has resided upon for the past thirty years. 

In *Ancestor Gesture*, Vickers brings together a selection of new and recent works covering more than ten years of output. From rhythmic abstractions inspired by the quillwork embroidery of her forebears, to a monumental cedar bone bead rendered as a teaching, to a suite of shimmering line drawings that index energy, spirit and breath, the exhibition highlights Vickers’ engagement with a broad spectrum of concerns, spanning meditations on power, protection, kinship, and healing. Presented together for the first time, the works on view reflect the intimacy and insistence of Vickers’ practice, speaking expansively across time, territory and tradition.

Work at Yaletown-Roundhouse Station is installed from September 17, 2021 to March 20, 2022. It is presented in partnership with the Canada Line Public Art Program, InTransit BC.

### Biography

Charlene Vickers is an Anishinaabe artist based in Vancouver. Her painting, sculpture and performance works explore memory, healing and embodied connections to ancestral lands. She is the recipient of the 2018 VIVA Award. Recent exhibitions include a co-presentation with Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Lets’lo:tseltun, Macaulay & Co. Fine Art (2021); *Rain Shadow*, Nanaimo Art Gallery (2021); *Where Do We Go From Here?*, Vancouver Art Gallery (2020); Biennale nationale de sculpture Contemporaine, Quebec (2020); *An Assembly of Shapes*, Oakville Galleries (2018); *Speaking with Hands and Territories*, SFU Galleries (2018); and *Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures*, Vancouver Art Gallery (2016). International group exhibitions include *the map is not the territory*, Portland Art Museum (2019); *Connective Tissue: New Approaches in Contemporary Fibre Art*, MoCNA, Santa Fe (2017); *From The Belly of The Beast*, Grace Gallery, Brooklyn (2017); and *If We Never Met*, Pataka Art Museum, Porirua, New Zealand (2016). Vickers graduated from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (1994) and Simon Fraser University (Critical Studies of the Arts, 1998; MFA, 2013).




ProgramGuideFall2021.pdf

ExhibitionGuideCharleneVickers.pdf

A detail view of a watercolour painting by Charlene Vickers, a geometrically rendered zigzag pattern rendered in a vibrant palette of ochres, golds, greens and blues.

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This is an installation view of Charlene Vickers’ drawings. 15 framed drawings of dense vertical lines made with coloured markers hang in a grid on a white wall. 

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This is an installation view of Charlene Vickers’ solo exhibition. Across from the wall on which a series of drawings are mounted are two tall cylindrical sculptures wrapped in painted fabric.

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This is a close-up view of Charlene Vickers’ sculptures. Tall cylindrical objects are wrapped in fabric, which is painted blue. Some small objects including buttons are attached to the sculptures.

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A set of fifteen tall, thin sculptures are leaning against a gallery wall. Their bodies are made of braided grass wrapped in white cotton. Human hair emerges from the top of each sculpture.

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This is the side view of a set of Charlene Vickers’ wrapped sculptures leaning against a wall. The length of each sculpture varies. Human hair emerges from the top of each sculpture.

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This is an installation shot of Charlene Vickers’ solo exhibition. A large bead-shaped sculpture made of wood sits on the floor. Behind it, a series of spear-shaped sculptures lean against the wall. 

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Twelve tall spear-shaped sculptures carved out of cedar lean against the gallery wall. They are all shaped in the same size and left unpainted. They stand vertically as if to make a fence. 

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A large wood sculpture is installed in a gallery space. It is the shape of a house with a large window in the middle. A painting depicting the silhouette of a woman sits in the window.

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Ancestor Gesture

In a career spanning more than thirty years, artist Faye HeavyShield has developed a practice of profound influence, renowned as readily for its poetic use of form and material as its evocative embodiments of memory, community and place. A powerfully concise aesthetic vocabulary gives shape to HeavyShield’s work, one rooted in the topography and texture of her homeland in the foothills of Southern Alberta and her upbringing in the Kainai community. Whether drawing on the winds, grasses and rivers of the Northern Plains; staging scenes redolent of gathering or exchange; or exploring elemental geometries that signal continuities and connections, the objects, images and installations of HeavyShield’s work manifest as extensions of land, language and body. 

At the Contemporary Art Gallery, HeavyShield presents a pair of new works in sculpture and drawing, each a meditation on lineage and line. An unbound sculpture, ropelike in form, anchors the exhibition, accompanied by a series of gestural drawings that recall the shape of a memory. Bearing the hallmarks of HeavyShield’s practice—repetition, distillation and material humility—these works extend the artist’s career-long reflections on continuance, on that which connects and sustains.


### Biography

Faye HeavyShield is a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy from the Kainai (Blood) Nation in the foothills of Southern Alberta. She is a fluent speaker of the Blackfoot language and studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary. HeavyShield has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Canada, including *Nations in Urban Landscapes*, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; *rock paper river*, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton; *Into the Garden of Angels*, The Power Plant, Toronto; and *blood*, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge. Her work is held in collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinburg; the Heard Museum, Phoenix; the Glenbow Museum, Calgary; and the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina.

ExhibitionGuideFayeHeavyShield.pdf

This is a close-up view of Faye HeavyShield’s beaded sculpture. It is a long unbounded string made of small red beads woven together. The smooth surface of each bead is reflecting the gallery light.

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A series of drawings and a ropelike sculpture are installed in a gallery space. The sculpture is placed on a large plinth. It is a red beaded cord forming a continuous line, maplike in shape.

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A ropelike sculpture is installed in a gallery space. The sculpture is placed on a large plinth. It is a red beaded cord forming a continuous line, maplike in shape.

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This is a close-up view of Faye HeavyShield’s beaded sculpture. It is a long unbound cord, which has been covered entirely in red beads. The surface of each bead reflects the gallery light.

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This is an installation shot of Faye HeavyShield’s drawings. Dozens of unframed drawings of various sizes and papers depict silhouettes of heads. They are hung closely to one another on a gallery wall.

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This is a close-up view of Faye HeavyShield’s drawings installed on a gallery wall. They were drawn with several different mediums, including markers and pens. They depict the shapes of human heads.

Video Visits

English Video Visits

Visites vidéo en français

Visitas de video en español

普通话视频之旅

粵語視頻參觀

Related Exhibitions