Exhibitions —

april april is pleased to present Open Door to the Sun, an exhibition of new and recent work by Faye HeavyShield, Zoe Koke, and Dionne Lee.

Open Door to the Sun comprises three artworks.

Faye HeavyShield’s real/i/ty (2025) is a sculpture of thirty digital prints folded into small boxes situated in a grid three high and ten wide. On each box, a printed image from the artist’s extensive photographic archive of prairie grasses, textured and pixelated, from her home in southern Alberta. Three of the boxes are upturned, their hollows filled with a tablespoon of dirt and pebbles from the gallery’s backyard in Pittsburgh.

Zoe Koke’s Rio Grande and Rio Bravo (2025), two square, oil on canvas paintings as one, a light-mottled river seen twice. Painted in the heat of Los Angeles, their palette toes the Rococo and gesture presences a crossing over, with, and for. There is no delineation along the banks of agitation.

Dionne Lee’s Currents II (2024), a silent, black and white film, fills the gallery’s windowsill. Over eighteen minutes, a string holds its spiral as it drifts along the shallow waters of a sun-bleached creek in Columbus. And then it doesn’t; shadow spilling over stone, the string unfurls its length along the mirrored, pewter surface.

This exhibition begins in, but leaves behind, photography. The prairie and rivers are apertures instead—of longing and slowness—how they express the world onto you.

Faye HeavyShield (b. 1953, Blood 148, Canada) is a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy from the Kainai (Blood) First Nation. She studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design and the University of Calgary, Alberta.

HeavyShield has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally since the 1980s. Recent solo exhibitions include the retrospective The Art of Faye HeavyShield, organized by the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, SK (toured to Nickle Galleries, Calgary, AB: Carleton University Art Galleries, Ottawa, ON; and Winnipeg Art Gallery, AB); Confluences, Pulitzer Art Foundation, Saint Louis, MO; Clan, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, AB; Calling Stones (Conversations), Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, AB; rock paper river, Gallery Connexion, Fredericton, NB; blood, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, AB; and Into the Garden of Angels, The Power Plant, Toronto, ON, among many others.

Significant group exhibitions include Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists, Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; III: HeavyShield, Knowles, Cameron-Weir, Remai Modern, Saskatoon, SK; Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg, MB; Nations in Urban Landscapes, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC; and Land, Spirit, Power, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON.

In 2021, HeavyShield received the Gershon Iskowitz Prize for her significant contributions to Canadian art, culminating in a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario to open August 2025. A large-scale commission will premiere at the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, AB in 2026. HeavyShield’s work can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the McMichael Museum, Alberta Foundation of Art, the Glenbow Museum, Heard Museum, the Kelowna Art Gallery, and the MacKenzie Art Gallery.

Zoe Koke (b. 1989, Calgary, AB, Canada) received her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, CA in 2019 and her BFA from Concordia University, Montréal, QC in 2013. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Palingenesis, 12.26, Dallas, TX; april april, Brooklyn, NY; Unchained Melody, Smart Objects, Los Angeles, CA; the second space, Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland; the serpent’s tail, Alice Amati, London, UK; American Myth, Washer/Dryer Projects, among others.

Recent group exhibitions include Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA; Sarah Brook Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich, Switzerland; room 3557, Los Angeles, CA; Franz Kaka, Toronto, ON; Lindon & Co., London, U.K.; One Trick Pony, Los Angeles, CA; Ochi Projects, Los Angeles, CA; Insect Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, among others. Her work is included in the public collection of the Royal Bank of Canada.

Dionne Lee (b. 1988, New York, NY) lives and works in Columbus, OH and received an MFA at California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 2017. Lee’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, New Orleans Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Princeton University Art Museum, Contemporary Art Gallery of Vancouver, CA, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, CA, Aperture Foundation, New York, International Center of Photography, New York, Light Work, New York, and Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts.

Recent exhibitions include: Outlooks: Dionne Lee, Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY; Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Spora, Swiss Institute, New York, NY; Widening the Lens: Photography, Ecology, and the Contemporary Landscape, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, and the Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; Prologue, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; All This Soft Wild Buzzing, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, CA; Re/Sisters, Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK; Penumbra Foundation, New York City; Site Unfolding, Bibeau Krueger, New York City; Tara Downs, New York City; Cushion Works, San Francisco, CA; The Locker Plant / Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX; Et al. San Francisco, CA; /(Slash), San Francisco, CA; FotoFest Biennial 2022: If I Had a Hammer, Houston, TX; and Center For Fine Art Photography at the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art, Fort Collins, CO.

Upcoming exhibitions include: Once Within A Time: 12th International, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM.

Lee is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow. She was an Artist-in-Residence at the Chinati Foundation, Unseen California, and Land Arts of the American West between 2022-2023. In 2019 Lee was an artist in residence at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. In 2016 Lee was awarded the Barclay Simpson Award and a Graduate Fellowship at Anderson Ranch Arts Center.

The gallery would like to thank the artists, and Rose Bouthillier and Petra Bibeau, for their efforts in realizing this exhibition.