About Heidi McKenzie

Heidi McKenzie is a ceramic artist based in Toronto, Canada. Heidi completed her MFA at OCADU in 2014. Heidi is informed by her mixed-race Indo-Trinidadian/Irish-American heritage. Heidi uses photography, digital media, and archive to forefront themes of ancestry, race, migration and colonization, as well as body and healing.

In 2022, Heidi was a finalist for the Shantz Award, Canada’s national emerging ceramics award. Heidi has exhibited internationally in Europe, Scandinavia and the US. The recipient of numerous grants, Heidi has created in Denmark, Hungary, Australia, China and Indonesia.

Heidi curated ‘Decolonizing Clay’ at the Australian Ceramics Triennale, 2019, and participated in the World Indian Diaspora Congress in Trinidad, 2020, and the Celebrating Girmityas (Indo-indenturehship) International Conference, May 2023. Heidi was inducted into the International Academy of Ceramics in 2022. Heidi serves as a volunteer board member with NCECA, the National Council for the Education of the Ceramic Arts.

Heidi’s solo exhibition at the Gardiner Museum, Reclaimed: Indo-Caribbean HerStories (spring 2023) continues to explore the little-known histories of Indo-Caribbean indentureship through a feminist lens.

Artist Statement

My studio practice engages issues of identity and belonging. Through abstract portraiture, I capture self, an individual, or a culture. I began incorporating photographic imagery on clay in 2014 to viscerally depict the fragmentation of body, and have moved on to explore image as archive. This body of work speaks to my personal histories through photographic imagery coupled with abstract representation. My work is informed by the everyday lived experience of my mixed heritage. In the 19thcentury, my ancestors traveled from Ireland to Canada and India to the Caribbean in hopes of a better life. In the 1950s, my parents married at a time when interracial marriages were illegal in several American states and extremely uncommon in both Canada and the U.S. I grew up on the East coast of Canada, on of a handful of brown faces in a sea of white, at the corners of “Canadianness.” Holding space and making place for people of color matters. Telling my family’s stories matter.

— Heidi McKenzie, 2022

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Used this piece of brain coral to@mono print this texture. Just having fun. #sculpture #ceramics #modernsculpture #spaceswithin
Working on ancestry. My grandfather lied about his age to get into WWI. My fathers cousins sister with her children - one of whom I’m working with to piece together our families histories. #diversity #sculpture #ccgg #buildingblocks #archivalph
Starting something new. A salad bowl is always a great place to “base” a new sculpture. #slabbuilt #ceramicsculptures #torontopotters
Day 9: detail of Postmarked, 2017. Slipcase porcelain. Iconic images of Canada, the Atlantic provinces, where I grew up@at the corners of Canadianness- as one of few brown faces in the 60’s, 70’s in New Brunswick. This work is in the coll
Day 8: Body Imaged, 2019. Ceramic substrate and inkjet decal. 42 x 0.02” porcelain tiles. All my own body imaging. From #cutmr2020 #ceramicsubstrate #porcelain #ceramicimagetransfer #sculpture #invisibleillness
Day 7: Boxed-in. 13 “cubes” 11cm x 11cm x 11cm. Slipcase porcelain, iron oxide decals. Self portait. Aftermath of invisible disability. Part of @gladstonehotel #cutmr2020. #ceramicsculptures #porcelain #invisibledisease
Day 6: Disembodied, 2018, stoneware, copper wash, wood fires reduction, wall mounted, 70cm x 40cm x 5cm. Currently on view until June 27 @carnegie_gallery - and particularly poignant as I struggle through my ongoing health issues without the help of
Day 5: Body Interrupted, 2016 at Walnut Contemporary. Earthenware, glaze, inkjet and iron oxide decals - telling the story of my father’s body on clay. He passed the day the show was struck. Six months before he stripped down to boxer shorts en
Day 4: one of the Illumination series of lanterns shedding light on the lives of the first Indian women to cross the ocean to the Caribbean to work as indentured labourers. Hand made porcelain, hand pressed tiles, wood, steel, LED socket/light, lante
Day 3 of the sculpture photo challenge. Division - hand made low-fire porcelain and hand pressed tiles with archival@images of the living circumstances of the indentured workers of the Caribbean - on Victorian-like room divider- bringing the lives of
Day 2 of 10 image challenge: IN MY BONES No 1. Unseen work created with the trauma of my ancestors graphically depicted - indentured “new slaves” - the one million Indians who came to the Caribbean to replace the emancipated African slave
Taking up the 10 images in 10 days challenge: “In My Bones” part of the Spaces Within Series literally documenting my Indo-Caribbean indentured workers on a Tracy representation of self. Yes that a 19th century’s stamp of Christophe
Today just getting g reacquainted with the wheel. Throwing whatever shapes that pleases me@out of 250g of Plainsman P480 clay that will all become test tiles. #clay #potter #potterywheel #porcelain #plainsmanclay
Please join me in supporting Ela through this difficult time. She truly needs our collective support. Every little bit counts. We’re more than halfway there!
Well Leyla likes In My Bones.
More canvas mosques ready to sand into submission. #sculpture #ceramicsculpture #ccgg
Sending my next batch of building block canvas to bisque with the last of the Division and Illuminated tiles underneath. A slow and cautious cone 04 at the time when electricity is low 24/7.
Back to the wheel after 8 months - windswept lakeshore unomis on they way!