Heidi McKenzie: Imaging and Imagining the Inhertiance of Colonialism by Debra Sloan

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/

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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!

Circular Dimensions with Maya Foltyn @ Carnegie Gallery

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.

A look into, around, and within Circular Dimensions

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...."

Body Within @ CUTMR2020, Gladstone

“The room was so beautifully
set up with the different media balancing themselves out and inter-connecting. I think what distinguishes you as an artist is the solid conceptual-emotional base from which your work emerges. I watched people come into the room and immediately recognize the prescient humanity emanating from your art. They were drawn to look and contemplate and feel. That comes from a lot of feeling and cogitating before and during the time when you put your hands in the clay.”
— Rosalind Gill, Author

A driving force in my sculpture practice is my lived experience of chronic pain and chronic illness coupled with the triumph of healing and living one day at a time. For over 20 years I suffered severe fibromyalgia and I have been living the fall-out of my congenital kidney disease for over thirty years. In 2015/2016 I had unexplained lower abdominal pain, which left me bedridden for weeks. I underwent countless tests to eventually discover a partially blocked femoral artery after eighteen months of investigation. I am living pain-free today, my incurable kidney disease in remission.

Surprise! Sunday at 5:30pm I was awarded a Designlines “Love Tag” for one of the “coolest exhibitions in Design TO” from an editor at Azure Magazine.

From January 16 - 19 over 2000 people “came up to my room” to experience my solo exhibition, Body Within at the Gladstone Hotel’s Design TO event. I put together a flyer of information mapping out the room - and am including this information in bits and pieces along with photography by Gabby Franks - candids and video documentation my own.

the architectural blueprint of the room that I curated/exhibited within with a guide to the works displayed - NOTE: 2 was in the diagonally opposite corner - planning on paper isn’t always what happens during installation.

I began my sculpture practice at Sheridan College, weaving self-portraits of the paradox of the way one looks versus the way one feels with twisted bands of clay. In the spring of 2018, I was invited to Kecskemet, Hungary to participate in a one-month symposium alongside six Canadian ceramic artists and seven Hungarians on the theme of “Muscle Memory.” Many of the exhibited works are born of this experience. (*) The new works in this exhibition are the result of my gathering of images from six hospitals over the last ten years.

Disembodied

1. Disembodied* 2018, stoneware, wood fired,70cm x 40cm x 5cm. This piece emerged from the ashes of the wood firing at Kecskemet in Hungary. It integrates my healing crisis in graphic abstract representation through process: the wood-fired iron-oxide rich stains allude to the scars and muscle memory of my ongoing struggles with the corporeal. $3,750 CDN + HST

3. Life Force* 2018, Ceramics, various, gas, wood, raku, electric fired; wall-mounted, each pair of kidneys approximately 25cm x30cm x 3cm; with audio soundscape of breathing, new composition for Body Within, “I AM HERE” by The Ambient Orchestra. Each pair represents a seven-year cycle where the body fully renews itself.
$3,750 CDN + HST

4. Lurking* 2018, 60cm x 80cm x 5cm, stoneware, porcelain slip, wall-mounted, archival home movies of the artist circa 1968-1972. This multi-media work embodies my organs in relief on a “blank slate” of porcelain-washed multipart “screen”, overlaid with video imagery of myself as an innocent newborn and toddler. $4,500 + HST.

Body Imaged

7. Body Imaged 2020, 42 porcelain substrate, 4.5” x 6.5” each, inkjet decals. This new work, inspired by Come Up to My Room is a testament to the extensive testing I have undergone over the last decade, from CAT scans, MRIs, X-rays, ultrasounds, ECGs and brain scans. $4,750 + HST.

Betrayed

2. Betrayed* 2018, stoneware, glaze, wood-fired. 37cm x 21cm x 10cm. This work is part of my formal modernist sculpture series “Spaces Within.”  The hollow negative space depicts the human bladder – its rawness and aggravated state are reflected in its colour and the inflamed process of firing the work itself. $1,200 + HST

Life Force (wall); Anima Worn (plinth)

5. Anima Worn 2012, 50cm x 50cm x 50cm (variable), stoneware, gas fired. While at Sheridan College (2010-2012) I developed a technique of twisting bands of thrown clay. Until then, I had suffered silently with the invisible chronic pain of fibromyalgia for decades. This work represents my cathartic process in healing both the pain and its associative shame. $4,500 + HST

Body Interrupted

6. Body Interrupted 2016/2020, 15 “cubes” 11cm x 11cm x 11cm, installation variable, slip cast porcelain and ceramic decal. I began this work after my healing crisis, 2014-2016. When I was unable to work on the wheel, I turned to slip casting to express the physical constraints of my body. Literally “boxed-in.” I have doubled the components of this piece for this exhibition. $3,750 CDN + HST.

The Wall of Inquiry (right); Betrayed (left)

8. Wall of Inquiry 2020, 70 letter size sheets, laser printed. This work was inspired by this room at the Gladstone Hotel, and the intent of Body Within, which is to give the viewer a sense of the overwhelm associated with my quest for healing. These are snapshots of a subsection of the tests that I underwent from 2009 to 2019. It also tracks the results of Ayurvedic treatment: I am living free of my “incurable” kidney disease.

“Body Within Artist Statement:
Using the media of clay, film and sound, this multi-part installation asks the question – what is it like to embody a human vessel that is invisibly fractured? Through abstraction, I share my experience and catharsis of chronic fibromyalgia, spontaneous collapsed lung, partially blocked femoral artery, congenital kidney disease and living with a compromised immune system. Some days feel full of struggle and defeat; other times I am filled with gratitude, serenity and optimism. I have created these works: their very existence affirms that “I am here.””

I would like to thank my husband, Ali Kazimi, for his unwavering support love and nourishment over the last twenty-five years. Thanks also to Emmanuel Albano for his hand in finalizing the video, Rosalind Gill and Arlene Moscovitch for their keen editorial input. Special thanks to Anil Hardit-Singh for his vision in composing the soundscape, I AM HERE. Thanks also to Toni Olshen, Jennifer Moore and Maya Foltyn for their selfless efforts on my behalf. Thanks also to the amazing team at the Gladstone: Nicki, Jacob, Alex, and the ever-able superwoman, Lee Petrie. Thanks also to Megan Feheley for her wisdom and guidance.

Soundscape by Ambient Orchestra  www.TheAmbientOrchestra.com   
Twitter   @AmbientOrch.  Soundcloud @AmbientOrch

This project is supported by the Ontario Arts Council’s Exhibition Assistance Program.