Collection: Heidi McKenzie

Heidi left a 20-year career in arts management to apprentice in her father’s ancestral home at the foothills of the Himalayas in India. Heidi returned to Canada and completed her Diploma at Sheridan College in 2012 and subsequently her MFA at OCADU.  In 2014/2015 the Canadian Clay and Glass Museum Shop featured Heidi’s sculpture in a solo exhibition, ‘Clay in Motion.’ Heidi has worked internationally as an artist-in-residence in China, Indonesia, Denmark, Australia and Hungary. She is an award-winning artist whose work has been exhibited internationally including biennials in Hungary and Romania, and the Toronto International Art Fair.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My studio practice engages issues of identity and belonging. As a Canadian-born woman of colour, I find myself unwittingly relegated to the happenstance spaces formed at the intersection of the mainstream, that is, at the corners of Canadianness. My work draws on two opposing ideas: linear curves that trace both interior and exterior spaces, and basic three-dimensional forms. I work in traditional modernist/minimalist form in juxtaposition to cast foundational Euclidian objects. The Spaces Within series transcends Eurocentric references, intended to appeal to the diversity of cultures in which we live; whereas the Muscle Memory work represents my cathartic healing journey.