The term “active shooter” is one we hear too often in today’s news. Here, Heap of Birds uses this contemporary phrase to characterize massacres committed by United States troops against Native Americans in the 1800s. Each of this work’s panels contains six lines of text evoking the violence of not only this country’s history but ongoing acts of oppression against Indigenous communities. The prints on the right are “ghost prints” of those on the left, made by using the residual ink remaining on the printing plate after the first print was produced. For the artist, these prints recall the “ghosts of a whole culture.”

Gallery label from

2021

Medium Monotype on forty-eight sheets
Dimensions sheet (each): 30 × 22" (76.2 × 55.9 cm); overall: 90 × 352" (228.6 × 894.1 cm)
Publisher Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds
Printer Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds
Edition unique
Credit Acquired through the generosity of Agnes Gund, Marlene Hess and James D. Zirin, the Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Kathy and Richard S. Fuld, Jr., Linda Goldstein, Maud I. Welles and Marnie Pillsbury.
Object number 109.2019.a-vv
Department Drawings and Prints

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Monotype

A unique print, typically painterly in effect, made by applying paint or printing ink to a flat sheet of metal, glass, or plastic.

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