Transdisciplinary artist Maria Hupfield activates her creations in live performances. She is interested in the production of shared moments that open spaces for possibility and new narratives. In her work, these moments of connection are recalled and grounded by coded and re-coded hand-sewn industrial felt creations and other material mash-ups worn on the body. An Urban off-reservation member of the Anishinaabek People she belongs to Wasauksing First Nation in Ontario, Hupfield is deeply invested in embodied practice, Native Feminisms, collaborative processes, craft and textiles.

Storywork: Maria Hupfield’s solo exhibition at Galerie Hughues Charbonneau, 2021

Maria Hupfield is a 2020-2022 inaugural Borderlands Fellow for her project Breaking Protocol at The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School and the Center for the Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University, and was awarded the Hnatyshyn Mid-career Award for Outstanding Achievement in Canada 2018. Previous projects at Galerie Hugues Charbonneau included her 2014 Performance Lab and 2017 transdisciplinary installation Stay Golden. She has exhibited and performed her work through her touring solo exhibition The One Who Keeps On Giving (organized by The Power Plant) 2017-2018, and solo Nine Years Towards the Sun, at the Heard Museum, Phoenix, 2019-2020. Amongst other places, she has also presented her work at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, the NOMAM in Zurich, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Galerie de L’UQAM, the New York Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, the New York Museum of Art and Design, BRIC House Gallery, the Bronx Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Site Santa Fe, and the National Gallery of Canada. She is co-owner of Native Art Department International with her husband artist Jason Lujan, and a founding member of the Indigenous Kinship Collective NYC.

Sound shared in this episode:

Maria Hupfield and Tusia Dabrowska Electric Prop and Hum Freestyle
documentation from 3 performances by Maria Hupfield and Tusia Dabrowska, including:
11.30.2017 MAD Museum
12.06.2017 The Gibney Dance Theater
07.03.2018 The Bric Media House
Maria Hupfield Performance Piece at Bronx Museum of the Arts
June 15th 2015 with Laura Ortman
“The one who keeps on giving” performance by Maria Hupfield
2017-01-29 documented at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery Toronto

This episode first aired June 14, 2021 for Broken Boxes on Radio Coyote, a project initiated by Raven Chacon and CCA Wattis Institute, on the occasion of Chacon's 2020-21 Capp Street Artist-in-Residency. Radio Coyote is currently produced by Atomic Culture and will transition to new programming Summer, 2021. www.radiocoyote.org

This episode is now streaming on iTunes & Spotify

This conversation was hosted by Ginger Dunnill of Broken Boxes Podcast