Common Ground, Indian Ceramics Triennale 2024

I was honoured to be invited to exhibit Girmitya Herstories at the Indian Ceramics Triennale with this international group of multi-disciplinary/ceramic artists, all working with the theme of Common Ground, at Delhi’s hottest new gallery, Arthshila. (January 19 - March 31, 2024)

Opening Night Artist Group Photo

Reclaimed: Indo-Caribbean HerStories

My solo exhibition Reclaimed: Indo-Caribbean HerStories is at on the main floor of the Gardiner Museum, May 4 - August 27. To view the opening remarks on May 3rd, view this link.

East wall, Main Floor, Gardiner Museum. All Images photo credit: Toni Hafkensheid.
CLICKTHE VIDEO HERSTORIES BELOW for 3-minute videos of each of the ten women locating themselves in the diaspora and telling us a story of their female ancestor.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

Artist Statement

I grew up in Fredericton, New Brunswick, the daughter of an Indo-Trinidadian immigrant who married an Irish-American woman—a brown face in a sea of white. My lived experience propelled me to engage with issues of race, identity, and representation. I began working with sepia-toned, iron-oxide rich archival photography on ceramic, rendering my father’s life and telling the stories of his ancestors. I persisted in using ceramic material in the production process, fusing coloured ceramic pigments onto hand-rolled porcelain.

Following the ideas of cultural theorist Arielle Azoulay, my work engages the socio-political landscape of my Indo-Caribbean ancestors, purposefully shedding light on the under-represented stories of Indo-Caribbean women. The “coolie belle” portraits were shot on glass plates by male colonial photographers and hand-processed. The postcards were exoticized and commodified for Western tourists at the turn of the last century, hardships erased. My process of transferring portraits to ceramic tile is an act of both reclamation and decolonization. The courage and defiance of these women uplifted their “new slave” status. They wore their savings on their bodies, jewellery fashioned from their earnings. I also give voice through portraiture to us, we, the descendants of the “coolie women,” to reclaim our herstories.

This panel discussion and community feedback session was recorded live on June 14th at the Gardiner Museum. Moderated by Alissa Trotz, U of T, and presented by Ramabai Espinet, U of T, Nalini Mohabir, Concordia, Joy Mahabir, Suffolk College, New York

Curatorial Statement, Sequoia Miller

Stories of Indian migrants who came to work on Caribbean plantations from the 1830s onward are often little-known. Toronto-based artist Heidi McKenzie explores the stories of Indo-Caribbean women and their descendants in Canada, including her own family, by reconsidering archival imagery and traditional jewellery forms through the lens of photography on translucent porcelain.

The end of the legal trade in enslaved people in the British Empire in 1833 prompted the immediate rise of indentured labour, particularly among people from India, in the Caribbean. An estimated half-million Indians migrated, often under dubious circumstances, to the plantations of the British colonies where they worked alongside formerly enslaved people of African descent. Among these, scholars estimate up to 20 percent were women, often widows or others escaping untenable situations. Archival studio photography from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries documents these women, showing them bedecked with ornate, layered jewellery. Worn to assert status, as cultural expression, and as a form of currency, such jewellery became associated initially with the labouring classes and, more recently, with craft-based ties to matrilineal heritage.

Reclaimed: Indo-Caribbean HerStories takes inspiration from archival and family images to explore how descendants of “coolie belles” in Canada today connect to stories of their matrilineal ancestors. While clear documentation exists for some women, the archive is scant for many, prompting speculative or artistic ruminations on how traditions and identities are both passed down and created. The three primary elements of the installation—ceramic sculptures viewed alongside historical jewellery; contemporary portraits printed on translucent porcelain; and archival images on porcelain suspended in frames—use a feminist lens to explore these stories in different ways.

Part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, this exhibition highlights the complex, longstanding, and often unpredictable interplay between ceramics and photography.

I would like to acknowledge the support of the City of Toronto.

Underneath Everything: Grandeur & Humility in Contemporary Ceramic Arts

I am humbled to have been invited by curator, Mia Laufer at the Des Moines Arts Centre, Iowa, and to have my work, Division, exhibited with this artist list: Ai WeiWei, Katayoun Amjadi, Eliza Au, Sally Binard, Paul Briggs, Candice J. Davis, Edmund de Waal, CBE, Theaster Gates, Donté K. Hayes, Simone Leigh, Ingrid Lilligren, Anina Major, Heidi McKenzie, Magdalene A.N. Odundo, DBE, Vick Quezada, Ibrahim Said, Rae Stern, and Ehren Tool

“Clay is the humblest of materials, it is underneath everything...You can manipulate of world with clay.”

— Theaster Gates

IM Pei Gallery - second part of the exhibition

The main gallery of Underneath Everything

tRaces: Lines, Lives, Loves

When Jennifer McRorie, Curator at the Moosejaw Museum and Art Gallery called and asked if I knew Jeannie Mah and was I interested in a two-person show, I didn’t hesitate. Jeannie and I had been scheming to do a show around our father’s as daughters of immigrants. The exhibition opened May 26th and runs until September 3, 2023 concurrently with by solo show, Brick by Brick: Absence vs Presence and Jeannie’s solo show, Invitation au Voyage.

Jeannie Mah, Heidi McKenzie with First Wave (foreground) and Head Tax (background)

Jeannie Mah and Heidi McKenzie are two established Canadian ceramic artists whose paternal ancestors’ lives directly intertwined with migration and immigration from China and the Caribbean via India, respectively. This exhibition is a portrait of these racialized narratives through ceramic works that incorporate archival image and document each artist’s family, with particular attention to the artists relationships with their fathers and the impact of intergenerational transcontinental journeys in their lives.

Mah’s multimedia, ceramic installations, featuring in situ drawings, video, and snapshots on porcelain vessels presented in composed series, speak of family history, social history and ceramic history, allowing her to traverse or bridge the geographical and metaphorical distance between her family’s motherland, China, and her home, Regina, by way of montage and imagination.

Mah’s work, Head Tax, seeks to mark the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which, in 1923, closed the door to all Chinese immigration until 1947. The Exclusion Act replaced the “Chinese Head Tax” which Canada imposed on Chinese immigrants starting in 1885. Mah’s father came to Canada alone in 1922 at age 12, one year before the Chinese Exclusion Act. His village paid the head tax of $500, now the equivalent of $8500, to send a son to “Gold Mountain”. His debt would be to repay the village from his net earnings. Returning home to marry in the 1930s, Mah’s mother and brother remained in China until 1950. ‘Ghost' images of Paul Mah’s (Mah Ying Poi) head tax certificate and a pattern detail of Blue Willow Bridge ware drawn directly on the gallery wall, ‘ghost images connect snapshots on porcelain pots of the artist’s family in China with those in Canada - all framing her father’s life in Canada, narrating a family story of lives bridging two continents. Mah explains, “As a Canadian child of immigrant parents, I have never ‘returned’ to China, so my research into Chinese porcelain is filtered through the European lens of art history. As I meander towards the Far East by way of museums, the historic object acts as a bridge to transport ideas and cultural values, via artifacts of the past to us in the ‘new world’ of the present.”

Mah‘s connection to China through museums and popular images is addressed in the work, From Mao’s House to Our House, speaking to the complexities of identity as insider/ outsider and native/ tourist. Images on five vessels montage several histories and narratives together: the Mah family in Canada – in front of their house and family store in Regina, their return to China as tourists in the 1970s and posing in front of Mao’s house in Shaoshan, Hunan. These images are flanked by Jeannie playing tourist in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, on both ends. Mah, as museum visitor, is presented as diminutive in front of Warhol’s pop culture icons of Mao, suggesting a disconnect or distance from the history of the Cultural Revolution.

In the video projection/installation, I am Blue Mikado, Mah plays with her Asian identity, “travelling towards the East by way of English bone china”. By isolating two figures in a landscape featured on a Royal Crown Derby, Blue Mikado dinner plate, Mah inserts herself into the scene in a poised and centred porcelain vessel, superimposing her own Canadian-born, southern-China face into a Japanese scene re-imagined by 19th century potters in Derby, England. In the drawn traces of a Blue Mikado dinner plate on the gallery wall and an overlaid video projection that fades in and out, Mah alludes to the history of European Chinoiserie, of cross-cultural appropriation and reinterpretation of blue-and-white porcelain driven by global trade and consumer desire for the exotic.

Heidi McKenzie’s mixed-media, ceramic installations feature sepia photographs printed on porcelain forms and video projection to speak of family history and the stories of her ancestors, and negotiating her own hybrid identity as a person of mixed Indo-Caribbean and Irish American ancestry. McKenzie’s father, Joseph Addison McKenzie, immigrated to Canada from Trinidad in 1953 at the age of 23, before Canada repealed its whites-only immigration policy in 1969. His ancestors crossed the seas from India to the Caribbean in the mid 19th century as indentured workers, who replaced/displaced the African slaves. Trinidad’s National Archives released the ships’ manifest to the public in 2020 to mark 175 years since arrival. The manifest graces the sails of her work, First Wave, which also features coins of British India from the time of this migration.

Illuminated, which features archival postcard images of “Coolie Belles” of the Caribbean, addresses the extreme hardships of Indo-indentureship and its harsh labour, while also speaking to the colonialist exoticism of Indo-Caribbean women on 20th century postcards - plantation labourers costumed and photographed in studios for the sake of Western tourism. McKenzie’s own great-great grandmother, Roonia, sailed from Calcutta to Guyana in 1864 and worked the sugar cane fields, a Hindu woman who married and raised four children on a plantation in Guyana near Suriname. She explains, “It was crucial for me to give voice through portraiture to us, we, the descendants of the “coolie women,” to reclaim our herstories.”

Works, such as House of Cards and Body Interrupted, document McKenzie’s father’s journey, growing up in Colonial Trinidad and his struggle to find his place as an immigrant of colour in Canada. Body Interrupted also speaks to her father’s perseverance, strength and determined will to survive that not only served him in establishing a life in Canada where he thrived, but aided him in his struggle with multiple terminal diagnoses later in life. The video projection/ installation, Lurking, offers an intimate portrayal of McKenzie’s close connection with her father, alluding to the building blocks of DNA and a genetically inherited condition passed through her father’s familial line that is statistically more prevalent in women from India.

Mah and McKenzie’s ceramic works address the personal, the familial, the cultural and the political, tracing the stories of their own immigrant families and the complexities of their negotiated identities as first-generation-born Canadians. Through the conceptual richness, elegant sincerity, and playful irony of their works, the artists reclaim and assert the narratives of their lineages and cultures through their own re-imaginings, and, in doing so, they expose little-known histories of racism and continuing legacies of colonialism.

2-minute video tour of the exhibition by Heidi McKenzie

OPENING RECEPTION: Gardiner RECLAIMED: Indo-Caribbean HerStories

My exhibition, over a year in the making from concept to creation, opened at the Gardiner Museum on May 3rd, 2023. The video of the remarks by Chief Curator, Sequoia Miller and myself below:

#CripClay @NCECA Cincinnati 2023

#CripClay was a concurrents exhibition of disabled artists by disabled artists at NCECA 2023 in Cincinnati. Disability does not mean an artist cannot be successful or a valuable member of a community; this is not a one size fits all abled-bodies only medium. Disability is the only minority group that anyone can join at any time. Let’s show what we can do.

Exhibiting Artists: Victoria Walton, Carly Riegger, Amanda Barr, Heidi McKenzie, Eva Polzer, Darcy Delgado, Ze Treasure Troll, Annie B Campbell, Allee Etheridge, Megan Whetstine, Elizabeth Peña, Samantha Wickman, Alicia van de Bor, Topher Surnome, Zys West, Coco Raymond, Felicity Jacques, Hayley Cranberry, Kelvin Crosby

I would like to thank the OAC for Exhibition Assistance Grant.

Disruption A-Space Gallery Spring 2023

Disruption, A-Space Gallery March 11th - April 22, 2023

This exhibition investigates how four women use their practices to disrupt a predominantly white, male, Eurocentric art narrative. This exhibition is part of the larger project to deconstruct society’s racist and sexist structural underpinnings with the aim of building a new foundation of multiplicity. Natalia Arbelaez, Magdolene Dykstra, Habiba El-Sayed, and Heidi McKenzie work to fashion a more egalitarian canon through artistic practices that delve into diverse histories. Arbelaez and McKenzie draw our attention to narratives that have long been overlooked. El Sayed and Dykstra use abstraction to subvert the spectator’s gaze, while simultaneously insisting upon their visibility.

…Heidi McKenzie’s ceramic sculpture First Wave (2021) grounds the exhibition with the history of labour and migration….Heidi McKenzie’s lantern series, Illuminated (2020-2021), highlights the use of photography as a tool for building empire….

— Maya Wilson-Sanchez

International Academy of Ceramics - Geneva

I was inducted into the International Academy of Ceramics this year, and had the privilege to attend, and present at Melting Pot, the IAC’s 50th Congress and 70th birthday (thank you to the Canada Council for the Arts). Over 300 delegates from over 50 countries, and uncountable ceramic arts of the most amazing kinds. Scroll through some highlights…

Venice 2022 - the Milk of Dreams!

This was my first Venice Biennale – although I had studied this biennale as the genesis of what has become an explosion of art biennales worldwide, Venice was the first to invite contemporary artists to represent their countries of origin by pavilion in 1896. I spent my first day at the Arsenale – a large covered warehouse, the old shipyards that date back to 1320.  Words cannot describe the joy in my heart as I came upon room after room of the sculpture, fine craft, paintings, mixed-media, new media and a special aural/visual experience of augmented reality sound with laser beams.

Arsenale

The Medieval ship yards

 I chatted with a number of the “sitters” about the works, I took my time. In the first rooms, I began a conversation with an American woman about the work by 15th century artists around the fetus in the womb that was indescribably detailed, and poetic in its fragility.  I moved on – and by the end of the rooms, we met again at the outdoor café. We decided to see the rest of the exhibitions together. Mica is a docent in San Antonio, and it was a lovely bonus to be able to voice my impressions and challenge each other with our opinions, ideas, and reactions.

 14K steps later, I hopped on a vaporetto and found my way “home” to my charming and generously large apartment near the Campo della Madelenna, about a 15-minute walk from the train station, 45 minutes from the main Biennale sites – but a stones throw from the Anish Kapoor and many other collateral exhibitions and off-site pavilions. I bought groceries and cooked in the apartment. Day 2, I headed for the Giardini – which is essentially a large theme park of individual national pavilions. I was graced with bright azure skies and the warmth of the early autumn sun my whole trip. I “did” the pavilions first. Happened into some IAC – International Academy of Ceramics colleagues I had met in Geneva and we had a brief lunch together before heading back to our art-filled itineraries.

 The Giardini pavilion was impressive, but, for me, not as strong as the Arsenale. It’s hard to mention artists or countries that stood out, but I would have to say the wonder of Belgium’s multi-screened array of children’s games from around the world; the surreal ethereality of Uzbekhistan, the otherworldliness of China, the profound simplicity of Germany (gutted interiors) (shifted on axis), the recognizable candour of Shuveni’s drawings,… I could go on and on.

 One worthy of note was the Saami pavilion, for the first time the Nordic countries pavilion was taken over by the Indigenous Saami, and one of the artists had presented at the IAC , Maret Anne Sara, – one whose work centers around hers and her brother’s struggle to stop a federal culling of the reindeer and deforestation that features the actual hides and bones of the reindeer that were killed – the skulls of which are now hanging at the entrance of the new Art Gallery of Oslo in Norway. She presented at the IAC regarding her wearable art, that includes miniature ceramic reindeer skulls which she exhibited as part of the IAC UNESCO exhibition, We Come From the Other Side.” I hope to interview her and write about her practice. Her IAC presentation was a comparison of the Alberta buffalo genocide and deforestation in Canada that parallels the recent injustices and atrocities in Norway.

 Day 3 and 4 I wandered on foot in the city, covering over 10K steps before noon – seeing art in and around the original “ghetto” – the word comes from the Medieval word for iron, and references the Jewish quarters from that period where you can still see the town well, and the works of metalsmiths and other artisans/craftspersons in the nearby shops. I met my good friends Alix Davis and David Donald from Toronto after lunch, as they had arrived from France – and we spend a day and a half in each other’s company with an easy itinerary. We “did” the Anish Kapoor, both sites – were awed by the genius of his geometric works and disappointed by his paintings and wax sculptures in blood-stained reds. And we included a visit to Moreno, a tour of the museum and found lunch and dinner that both Alix and I could enjoy (not an easy feet with our restrictions!)

Arrivaderci!

Heading home on a direct flight from Venice, and I know in my heart the magic of Venice and the Biennale have found a recurring place in the chapters of my life that have yet to unfold.

At Home and Elsewhere: Artists in Conversation, Surrey Art Gallery

Surrey, BC – Surrey Art Gallery is pleased to announce At Home and Elsewhere, an online panel discussion featuring artists who will speak about their work in the Gallery’s current exhibition, the themes of the exhibition, and also how the dynamics of the pandemic have shaped their practice—at home and in public. Their works variously address themes of diaspora, racism, communication, desire, pop culture, and more. The panel features a diverse roster of practicing contemporary artists: Sonny Assu, Heidi McKenzie, Helma Sawatzky, and Jan Wade. The conversation will be introduced and facilitated by Surrey Art Gallery Assistant Curator, Rhys Edwards.

This informal conversation was live streamed on November 14th, 2020 5pm EST.

Where We Have Been, Surrey Art Gallery

September 19 to December 4, 2020

Artists: Michael Abraham, Jim Adams, Sonny Assu, Sylvia Grace Borda, Karin Bubaš, Sarindar Dhaliwal, Lakshmi Gill, Ravi Gill, Jeremy Herndl, Doreen Jensen, Chris MacClure, Heidi McKenzie, Ulli Maibauer, Arnold Mikelson, Shani Mootoo, Ann Nelson, Fred Owen, Bill Rennie, Don Romanchuk, Adele Samphire, Nicolas Sassoon, Helma Sawatzky, Ranjan Sen, Jan Wade, Stella Weinert, Leslie Wells, Joanna S. Wilson

Above photo’s courtesy of Ying-Yueh Chuang

“Where We Have Been explores the interconnection between place and identity in the South of Fraser region, through selections from the Surrey Art Gallery’s permanent collection. In many cases, art acts as a record of the artist’s perception of the world around them, functioning to situate them within a place. This process is important for anyone attempting to establish an idea of home, whether they identify as Indigenous, migrant, settler, or otherwise.

However, in other instances, artworks complicate the relationship between home and identity. Artworks embody traditions, rituals, and memories, which act as binders to a past which may otherwise have been transformed or displaced during the movement into the present. Elsewhere, the artist finds themself in a non-place, documenting instead their alienation, or the failure to find security within their community.

During a moment when our relationship with space is highly fraught, Where We Have Been speaks to the ways in which artists shape our communities through the portrayal of suburban and natural environments around the South of the Fraser, as well as personal narratives and cultural histories.”

— Rhys Edwards, Curator, Assistant Curator Surrey Art Gallery

Best in Show: Latcham Gallery Annual Juried Exhibition

Juror, Peter Flannery, Assistant Curator at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery confers my Best in Show Award to a full house of supporters, March 4, 2020.

And the winners are: (left to right) Gallery Curator, Alexandra Hartstone, Lo Scott (sculptor), Heidi McKenzie (sculptor), Peter Flannery (juror), Stephanie Porter (juror) …

Sharron Forrest with her ‘cutting edge’ work!

Making new connections with other exhibiting artists - Joanna Strong’s work is about her mixed-race children.

Heidi’s House of Cards

“House of Cards speaks to the precarious nature of my late father’s life as an immigrant from Trinidad who came to Canada in the early 1950’s and facing at times violent racism, while simultaneously serving as a metaphor for the fragility of his own human vessel and ongoing health struggles. It literally documents through archive the burdens of his story: imprinted with iron-oxide on porcelain ceramic substrate, this “house of cards” also references his passion for bridge, and his steadfast dedication to building a home for his family. ”

Friends from Pinetree - Sharon and Penny!