Read MoreArtists here often metaphorically and literally interweave elements of the local environment into their practices, reflecting strong affinities with our shared ecology. We look to the ocean, the forests, our scrappy cities, and climactic extremes as the raw material for creating works.
— Gillian Dykeman, Atlantic Vernacular Exhibition Curator
Disrupting the Canon - with Natalia Arbalaez, Magdolene Dykstra and Habiba El-Sayed. Heidi McKenzie’s work illuminated the little-know history of the indo-caribbean indentured workers from the 19th and early 20th century.
Read MoreThe title of the Biennial, FLUX, conjures ideas of movement, change, environment, migration, science, mathematics, as well as being a ceramic technical term for melting and flowing of materials, and ideas.
Read MoreLes organisateurs de la BILP ont conçu une programmation dont les divers éléments prennent place dans les lieux patrimoniaux de Deschambault-Grondines, du 19 juin au 3 octobre 2021.
Le Vieux presbytère de Deschambault et le Moulin de La Chevrotière accueillent l’exposition Revirements qui réunit les oeuvres de 20 artistes professionnels du Québec, du Canada, de la Belgique, des États-Unis de la France, de la Lituanie, des Pays-Bas, de la Pologne et du Portugal.
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Heidi McKenzie is a Canadian, and a finecraft ceramic artist of Indo-Trinidadian and Scots-Irish descent. During the last decade, McKenzie has been producing ceramic sculptures engaged with issues concerning systemic racial inequality. Through the lens of her familial encounter with indentureship, McKenzie encircles such specifics as the duality of bi-racial descent and the global consequences of colonialism. Her visual treatise urges the white community, to which I belong, to collectively recognize embedded racial privilege, and to work towards change. In the words of the american, Theastre Gates, whom McKenzie admires, “art and Protest are forms of political thought”.
Originally published in May/June 2021 issue No 3/21 of New Ceramics Monthly, pages 28-31 . .Copyright, New Ceramics, Berlin, Reprinted with permission. https://neue-keramik.de/wp/index.php/nc/current-issue/
The pervaseiveness of mainstream White racial superiority i North Americ today exists in the wake of the continent’s history: the colonization and genocide of its Indigenous peoples; slavery and its aftermath; and the subsequent exclusionary Whites only migration policies imposed by European settlers and lawmakers until the mid to late 1960s…
Read MoreThe pervaseiveness of mainstream White Racial superiority in North America today exists in the wake of the continent’s history: the colonization and genocide of its Indigenous peoples; slavery and its aftermath; ad the subsequent exclusionary Whites only migration policies imposed by European settlers and lwmakers until the mid to late 1960s….
Read MoreOriginally published in November/December issue of New Ceramics, pp. 24-27. Reprinted with permission.
Read MoreOriginally published in February 2021 issue of Ceramics Monthly, pages 40-43 . http://www.ceramicsmonthly.org . Copyright, The American Ceramic Society. Reprinted with permission.
Read MoreSurrey, 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.
Originally published in November 2020 issue of Ceramics Monthly, pages 38-41 . http://www.ceramicsmonthly.org . Copyright, The American Ceramic Society. Reprinted with permission.
Read MoreIn conversation with Devyani Saltzman @ AGO as Art in the Spotlight - re my work with image, archive, family, and indentured servitude in the Caribbean.
Read MoreSeptember 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.”
Join me as I walk you through my home and studio to see the work about my mixed Indo-Caribbean/Irish heritage.
Read MoreOriginally published in September 2020 issue of Ceramics Monthly, pages (28-31). http://www.ceramicsmonthly.org . Copyright, The American Ceramic Society. Reprinted with permission."
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I presented Body Within from the Gladstone Hotel Come Up To My Room as part of the Surrey Muse Artist Salon on April 25th, 2020.
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Heidi McKenzie challenges dominant power centers by confronting racial marginalization and the inextricable joining of migration and colonialism of her family’s past. McKenzie began her ceramics career in 2010, engaging with abstract self-portraiture, throwing and altering bands of agateware on the wheel. Participating in Project Network at Guldagergaard Ceramic Research Center in Denmark allowed her to explore multiple-part mold making, as well as photographic image transfer. At first, McKenzie used imagery to more viscerally express the human body, her own body. In 2016, following the death of her father, McKenzie began to investigate functional pottery. Illness prevented her from working on the wheel, so she developed a series of slip cast porcelain neriage pots. Neriage technique relies on laminating different colored clays together, allowing them to mix into a swirling blend of the clays, referencing her mixed-race Indo-Trinidadian/Irish-American identity.
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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!
It was an honour and a pleasure working with Maya Foltyn and her family on this dialogue between her paintings and drawings and my sculptural work - inspired from my time in Australia, in 2017, including works made at Medalta 2019 and newer works from my Parkdale kiln. Check out the complete series Spaces Within
We had an amazing crowd of over 60 people who came out and stayed and spent quality time talking to us and asking lots of questions - on the opening, Friday February 7th
“In 2017 I embarked on my “Spaces Within” series. This work reinvigorates modernism in our times, and engages issues of race and identity, seeking to transcend Eurocentricism. The hollow negative spaces represent a simultaneous sense of loss, renewal, and overall belonging.
— Heidi McKenzie”
About 30 souls came out for our Artist Walk-Through and Q & A at the Carnegie on February 23rd, 2020
Maya describing the use of bitchumen in her drawings during the Q&A
Heidi describing her experience of James Cook’s observation of “terra nullius” when he discovered Australia - negating the existence of Indigenous People’s - in the face of the evidence of abalone fish hooks found on the site.
This monograph was written by Agnieszka Foltyn based on interviews she had with each of the artists, myself and Maya Foltyn. Circular Dimensions opens Friday, Feb.7th, 7-9pm. Artists’ Walk-through Sunday Feburary 23, 2pm.
"...The practices of Heidi McKenzie and Maya Foltyn touch and separate, intersect and cross over, flow in parallel and divide in separate directions. These are not linear trajectories but rather circular or cyclical meanderings, stimulated and affected by the machinations of society throughout time. They are dreams, thoughts, extensions of a willingness to understand or to come into contact with the unknown...."
