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An Alberta artist has been awarded one of the top honours in Canadian art.
Kainai Nation artist Faye HeavyShield was announced as one of eight 2026 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts winners in September, making her the only Albertan recognized through this year’s Artistic Achievement Awards.
HeavyShield’s portfolio spans nearly half a century. Her sculptures, installations, drawings and audio have been displayed in galleries across Canada since the 1980s, with her artwork drawing from her lived experiences as a Blackfoot woman.
“I’ve been at it for a while, and I’ve always wanted to be true to what I do,” HeavyShield told CBC News in a phone call from Stand Off, Alta., located southwest of Lethbridge on the Blood Reserve.
“The art itself has, in its different ways, made itself felt,” she said.
WATCH | Canada Council for the Arts shares video portrait celebrating Faye HeavyShield:
HeavyShield’s work includes images of local landscapes, women’s clothing, women’s voices, graphite, and various types of paper, as well as writing.
“Those for me are just as much drawings as they are words,” she said of her written work.
Two installations by Faye HeavyShield — ‘the red line’ (foreground) and ‘I’ll know you when I see you’ (background) — were on display at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver from September 2021 to January 2022. (Canada Council for the Arts handout – SITE Photography)
Faye HeavyShield’s 2002 piece ‘Aapaskaiyaawa’ (Blackfoot for ‘They are Dancing’) pictured on display at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina. (Canadian Council for the Arts handout – Don Hall/MacKenzie Art Gallery)
The Governor General’s Award is not the first time HeavyShield ‘s art has been in the national spotlight. One of her most recognizable works, Body of Land, was displayed at the National Gallery of Canada in 2017 and 2018.
That piece features digital close-ups of skin fashioned into cones to create a landscape of lodges. She says the piece explores the concept of the body becoming land, and the land becoming the body.
WATCH | ‘Body of Land’ on view at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa:
HeavyShield was also awarded the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award in 2021 and was among the recipients of the inaugural Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal in 2022, among other awards and honours over the course of her career.
In her nomination letter for the Governor General’s Award, Contemporary Calgary grants officer Johanna Plant Donnelly gave a glowing recommendation.
“Disarming in its beauty and widely accessible due to its minimalist vocabulary, HeavyShield’s work fosters greater understanding of Indigenous outlooks while offering next generations of Indigenous artists from the Northern Plains and across Turtle Island an outstanding example of a successful career and a profoundly ethical approach rooted in her culture,” Donnelly wrote.
Faye HeavyShield’s 2026 ‘Pierce’ was made with acrylic on paper and porcupine quills. (TrépanierBaer)
“This dedication to sharing her culture, especially during times of limited public awareness and fraught settler-Indigenous relations, makes her a trailblazer and an unwavering advocate,” Donnelly wrote.
The eight recipients of the 2026 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts will each get a $25,000 prize and a bronze medallion.
HeavyShield says she’s looking forward to the ceremony celebrating the award recipients.
“I’m happy to be sharing it with my family and my friends,” she said.