Based in Oklahoma City and on tribal land, Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne and Arapaho Nation) creates artwork that confronts repressed histories of violence against Native communities in the U.S. Neuf for Modoc belongs to Heap of Birds’s Neuf Series (neuf is the Cheyenne number four). The title refers to the Modoc tribe, of northern California and southern Oregon, who engaged in armed resistance against the U.S. military in the nineteenth century to fight removal from their homelands. While some remain on these lands today, a significant number of the Modoc were sent to Oklahoma as prisoners of war.

Heap of Birds was inspired by the Modoc’s adopted Oklahoma lands in his Neuf series, citing the cedar trees, the arroyos, and the natural water sources as formal references for the abstract forms in the work. For the artist, the series has taken on a life of its own: “At this point the water-world has merged with the pastoral tree forms to create a pulse of color in shapes that grow, overlap and swim through the picture plane. The issue of motion offers a positive notion of movement and change which always holds hope,” he has explained.