Conversation with Artist Maria Hupfield

June 01, 2016 by Ginger Dunnill

Broken Boxes Podcast is proud to present this episode as the fifth installation in a series of interviews featuring artists and their respondents from the socially engaged project #callresponse.

In this episode, Maria Hupfield speaks about her experiences living as an artist in New York, the influence her upbringing has had on her lifestyle, and shares reflections on where she finds inspiration to fuel her creative process. Maria speaks about her recent project It Is Never Just About Sustenance or Pleasure as part of SITElines, which is the second installment in SITE Santa Fe’s biennial series, opening July 16, 2016. Maria also reflects on the #callresponse project and shares more about her role as a participating artist and as one of the three initial project organizers.

Maria Hupfield. It Is Never Just About Sustenance or Pleasure, video installation video still 2016 Photo: Julie Nymann

"In live performance I insert myself into new conversations, activate space, and locate the body in relationship to self, collaborators, objects and place. My hand-sewn creations function as tools; jingles track body rhythms and modified industrial felt items are both shield and screen. These sculptures are carried on the body, recall everyday contemporary life and reflect upon sight, and sound, using the unexpected to shift meaning." - Maria Hupfield

Here is the conversation with Maria Hupfield:

Subscribe to Broken Boxes Podcast on iTunes HERE to stream and download this episode

Music featured in this episode by Rosary Spense and ANOHNI

More about the artist:

Maria Hupfield is a member of Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario, currently based in Brooklyn NY. A featured international artist with SITE Santa Fe 2016, she received national recognition in the USA from the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation for her hand-sewn industrial felt sculptures. Hupfield was awarded a long term Canada Council for The Arts Grant to make work in New York with her nine-foot birchbark canoe made of industrial felt assembled and performed in Venice, Italy for the premiere of Jiimaan, coinciding with the Venice Biennale 2015. Recent projects include free play Trestle Gallery Brooklyn with Jason Lujan, and Chez BKLYN an exhibition highlighting the fluidity of individual and group dynamics of collective art practices; conceived by artists in Brooklyn and relayed at Galerie SE Konst, Sweden. She was a guest speaker for the Distinguished Visiting Artist Program, University of British Columbia, Indigenous Feminist Activism & Performance event at Yale, Native American Cultural Center and Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Indigenous Rights/Indigenous Oppression, Symposium with Tanya Tagaq at the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, MD. Like her mother and settler accomplice father before her Hupfield is an advocate of native community arts and activism. The founder of 7th Generation Image Makers, Native Child and Family Services of Toronto, a native youth arts and mural outreach program in downtown Toronto she is Co-owner of the blog Native Art Department International. Hupfield is represented by Galerie Hugues Charbonneau in Montreal.

Presented in conjunction with #callresponse Maria's second iteration of Post Performance / Conversation Action, with Special Guest Alanis Obomsawin, at L'UQAM Galery MontrealJune 5th, 2016 is presented by OFFTA as part of Indigenous Contemporar… — Presented in conjunction with *#callresponse* Maria's second iteration of *Post Performance / Conversation Action*, with Special Guest Alanis Obomsawin, at L'UQAM Galery MontrealJune 5th, 2016 is presented by OFFTA as part of Indigenous Contemporary Scene (ICS), a programming produced by ONISHKA. http://offta.com/en/2016-edition/program/ Photo credit: Henry Chan

#callresponse project details:

Strategically centering Indigenous women as vital presences across multiple platforms, #callresponse is a multifaceted project which includes a website, social media platform, touring exhibition and catalogue. The project brings together five local art commissions by Indigenous women artists from across Canada, including Christi Belcourt, Maria Hupfield, Ursula Johnson, Tania Willard and Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory. Each artist has invited a guest to respond to their work, including Isaac Murdoch, IV Castellanos and Esther Neff, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Marcia Crosby and Tanya Tagaq.

#callresponse is co-organized by Tarah Hogue, Maria Hupfield and Tania Willard, and produced in partnership with grunt gallery and generously supported by the {Re}conciliation initiative of the Canada Council for the Arts, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and The Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. Additional presentation partners include BUSH Gallery, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, FADO Performance Art Centre, Kamloops Art Gallery, OFFTA live art festival, the National Arts Centre, and the Native Education College.

Conversation with Singer Tanya Tagaq

May 10, 2016 by Ginger Dunnill

Broken Boxes Podcast is proud to present this episode featuring Tanya Tagaq, respondent Artist for Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory. This is the fourth installation in a series of interviews featuring participants and their respondents from the socially engaged project #callresponse.

In this conversation, Tanya Tagaq offers an honest reflection to being an established recording artist today. She speaks about her relationship with her incredible band, her ideas surrounding being a mother and a touring artist, ways in which she practices self care and she shares her views on reconciliation and the important role that art plays in society. Tanya also speaks about her past collaborations and relationship with artist Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory, who Tanya is the respondent artist for in the #callresponse project.

“Tagaq projects sounds that carry the imprint of the body’s secret contours and recesses, delving far beyond personal utterance, out beyond human identity, to summon voices from the flesh cavity haunts of animal spirits and primal energies.” —THE WIRE, UK

Here is the conversation with Tanya Tagaq:

Subscribe to Broken Boxes Podcast on iTunes HERE to stream and download this episode

All music featured on this episode by Tanya Tagaq

Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory and Tanya Tagaq performance, 2015. photo credit: Front of House Photography.

More about the artist:

Tanya Tagaq’s music isn’t like anything you’ve heard before. Unnerving and exquisite, Tagaq’s unique vocal expression may be rooted in Inuit throat singing but her music has as much to do with electronica, industrial and metal influences as it does with traditional culture.

This Inuk punk is known for delivering fearsome, elemental performances that are visceral and physical, heaving and breathing and alive. Her shows draw incredulous response from worldwide audiences, and Tagaq’s tours tend to jump back and forth over the map of the world. From a Mexican EDM festival to Carnegie Hall, her music and performances transcend language.

Tagaq makes musical friends and collaborators with an array of like-minded talents: opera singers, avant-garde violin composers, experimental DJs, all cutting edge and challenging. Tanya’s albums make for complex listening, but her string of Juno nominations attests to her ability to make difficult music speak a universal tongue.

Tagaq's most recent album, Animism was produced by west coast shape-shifter Jesse Zubot (Dan Mangan, Fond of Tigers) with additional production by Juan Hernandez. The record features Michael Red (Low Indigo), a live programmer whose wild northern field recordings often serve as Tagaq’s de facto backing band, percussionist Jean Martin and Belgian opera singer Anna Pardo Canedo.

Animism has received major critical praise and attention in Canada. The album won the 2014 Polaris Music Prize, a prestigious annual award (based on the UK’s Mercury Prize) that judges albums based on “the highest artistic integrity, without regard to musical genre, professional affiliation, or sales history.” Tanya’s unforgettable gala performance and acceptance speech have further amplified the impact of this win, and her victory has been heralded a turning point in Canadian music and culture. Animism has also been nominated for in “Pushing the Boundaries” and Aboriginal Songwriter of the Year categories from the Canadian Folk Music Awards (winners have not been announced at this time).
Resource: Six Shooter Records

#callresponse project details:

Conversation with Artist Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory

April 16, 2016 by Ginger Dunnill

Broken Boxes Podcast is proud to present this episode as the third installation in a series of interviews featuring participants and their respondents from the socially engaged project #callresponse.

In this episode we get into conversation with performance artist Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory. She speaks on work as a uaajeerneq performer of Greenlandic mask dancing and her use of poetry as art form. She speaks on her upcoming performance project with #callresponse and we also hear about her experience as a founder and Executive Director of Qaggiavuut, Iqaluit’s first performing arts center. Laakkuluk gives insight on the balance of being a mother and an artist, remembering our connection to land, and ways to create creative space within our communities.

“I am an advocate for the deep human need for all people, but especially post-colonial Indigenous people to express themselves at a level of creative excellence. I am a mother, wife, writer and performer based in Iqaluit, Nunavut" - Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory

Here is the conversation with Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory:

Subscribe to Broken Boxes Podcast on iTunes HERE to stream and download this episode

All music featured on this episode by artist Tanya Tagaq from the album Animism

More about the Artist:

Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory is a uaajeerneq performer of Greenlandic mask dancing, music, drum-dancing, storytelling and acting. Her career has allowed her to travel all across Canada and to many wondrous parts of the world. Laakkuluk’s poetry was recently commissioned for the exhibit Fifth World (2105), Wanda Nanibus Curator, Mendel Gallery, Saskatoon. Her collaboration From the Belly to the Moon(2012), a six part postcard exchange project connecting performance art in Iqaluit to New York was a Fuse Magazine artist project. In addition to her poetry, theatre and uaajeerneq, Laakkuluk is founder and Executive Director of Qaggiavuut, Iqaluit’s first performing arts center. She also curated projects that challenged outdated museum exhibition practices for Inuit culture at the Art Gallery of Ontario including: Inuit Art in Motion(2003) and litarivingaa? Do You Recognize me?(2004), which additionally brought youth together across urban and rural environments through Tauqsiijiit an onsite residence youth media lab located at the heart of the exhibition with participants from: Igloolik Isuma Productions, Qaggiq Theatre, Siqiniq Productions, Daybi, Tungasuvvingat Inuit Youth Drop In Centre (Ottawa), 7th Generation Image Makers (Native Child and Family Services of Toronto), Debajehmujig Theatre Group (Wikwemikong) and Qaggiq Theatre (Iqaluit). “I am an advocate for the deep human need for all people, but especially post-colonial Indigenous people to express themselves at a level of creative excellence. I am a mother, wife, writer and performer based in Iqaluit, Nunavut. My three children speak Greenlandic, Inuktitut and English – all languages part of their heritages. I am passionate about spending time on the land – hiking, snowmobiling, boating, hunting, camping, eating wild foods, building cabins and cultivating raccoon tans are all activities that figure largely in my family.”

Qaggiavuut Performing Arts Society Website

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory and family in Greenland 2015

Artist Project Details:

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory: ujimajaaqtuqanngiguuq "they call it traditional knowledge" is a 30 minute performance piece to take place at the Nunavut Legislature, based on Greenlandic mask dancing and incorporating storytelling and electronic music. Uaajeerneq is a clownish dance that is highly sexualized, frightening and hilarious. It is a type of entertainment that teaches children about panic, adults about boundaries, or the lack thereof and examines the limits of human experience in the unknowable immensity of the universe. Every Uaajeerneq dancer sees the performance as a selfrealization in the face of decolonization. “As I develop my practice, I'm looking for ways of people, both Inuit and nonInuit to see art as an individual exploration of identity, culture, politics, ugliness and beauty and not as a pageantry of "Inuit art." This project is taking a meaningful part of my practice right to the centre of Nunavut politics the legislature, addressing this idea full on.” Laakkuluk works with a group of seven politically minded Inuit on community actions and political discussions, who will collectively act as the respondent for this project, creating an audio recording of the group’s dialogue for the project’s exhibition at grunt gallery. This group comes together to challenge themselves and support each other to make political change at a community and a territorial level, acting as a safe zone for political discussion and often collaborating with each other for other projects. Professionally, the group is comprised of artists, bureaucrats and in various positions of emerging leadership.

#callresponse Project Details:

Conversation with Artist Cheryl L'Hirondelle

March 28, 2016 by Ginger Dunnill

Broken Boxes Podcast is proud to present this episode as the second installation in a series of interviews featuring participants and their respondents from the socially engaged project #callresponse.

In this episode we get into conversation with Cheryl L'Hirondelle, a community-engaged Alberta-born, Cree/Metis, interdisciplinary artist, singer/songwriter and curator. L'Hiriondelle speaks about two major projects that continue to evolve through her practice and we hear how music and voice act as the primary tools for expressing her work. She shares reflection on her experience as Ursula Johnsons respondent artist for #callresponse and gives insight regarding the evolving life of the artist and the importance of connectivity.

Since the early 1980s, L’Hirondelle has created, performed and presented work in a variety of artistic disciplines, including music, performance art, theatre, performance poetry, storytelling, installation, and new media. Her creative practice investigates a Cree worldview (nêhiyawin) in contemporary time-space. L’Hirondelle has developed endurance-based performances, interventions, site-specific installations, interactive net.art and new media projects and keeps singing, making rhythm, writing songs and telling stories/giving voice whenever and wherever she can. Currently based in Toronto, she has performed and exhibited her work widely both in Canada and abroad, and her previous musical efforts and new media work have garnered her critical acclaim and numerous awards.

Here is the conversation with Cheryl L'Hirondelle:

Subscribe to Broken Boxes Podcast on iTunes HERE to stream and download this episode

All music featured on this podcast episode provided by the artist Cheryl L'Hirondelle

Catch up on the #callresponse series and listen to Broken Boxes Podcast interview with Ursula Johnson and the projects introduction interview featuring Maria Hupfield, Tarah Hogue and Tanya Willard.

More About The Artist:

According to many dictionaries the swallow (aka l'hirondelle) is a “migratory swift-flying songbird.” This describes Cheryl L'Hirondelle accurately - though for this award-winning singer/songwriter and multi-disciplinary artist the definition should end with "and so much more." An Alberta born mixed-blood, multi and interdisciplinary artist, singer/songwriter and curator, her creative practice is an investigation of the junction of a cree worldview (nêhiyawin) in contemporary time space.

Caged Bird Sings project. Cheryl L'Hirondelle — Caged Bird Sings project. Cheryl L'Hirondelle

Since the early 80's, L'Hirondelle has created, performed and presented work in a variety of artistic disciplines, including: music, performance art, theatre, performance poetry, storytelling, installation and new media. In the early 90's, she began a parallel career as an arts consultant/advisor and programmer, cultural strategist/activist, and director/producer of both independent works and projects within national artist-run networks. L’Hirondelle’s various activities have also found her working in the Canadian independent music industry, as well as various educational institutions, the prison system, First Nations bands, tribal councils and governmental funding agencies, at both the provincial and federal levels.L’Hirondelle’s performance work is featured in Caught in the Act: An Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women (2001), written by the late Âhâsiw Maskêgon Iskwêw, and edited by Tanya Mars and Johanna Householder. L’Hirondelle’s 2001 performative activity and corresponding website cistêmaw îyîniw ohci (for the tobacco being) are also discussed in Candice Hopkin’s book, Making a Noise: Aboriginal Perspectives on Art, Art History, Critical Writing and Community (2006). In 2004, L’Hirondelle and Hopkins were the first Aboriginal artists from Canada to be invited to present work at DAK’ART Lab, as part of the 6th Edition of the Dakar Biennale for Contemporary African Art, Dakar, Senegal. In both 2005 and 2006, L’Hirondelle was the recipient of the imagineNATIVE New Media Award for her online net.art projects: treatycard, 17:TELL and wêpinâsowina. L’Hirondelle’s previous musical efforts have also garnered her critical acclaim with two Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards 2006 and 2007 for her contributions to Vancouver based Aboriginal Women’s Ensemble M’Girl. Her own first attempt in producing (and as one half of) the singing/songwriting duo Nikamok was recognized with a nomination from the Prairie Music Awards (now the Western Canadian Music Awards) and many of her songs have been licensed for television, documentary and feature films. In 2011, Cheryl was also nominated for a KM Hunter Award in Music.

Ever the visionary, she continues to come up with new ways music and her other artistic ideas can converge and in 2009 was recognized as an Honoree in the Net.Art category from the Webby Awards for nikamon ohci askiy (songs because of the land), an ongoing and now international sonic mapping and songwriting project now called Sing Land X Song Mark. She was also nominated for a K.M. Hunter Music award in 2011 and since 2008 has been working on co-composing a series of songs with incarcerated women, men and detained youth in federal prisons, provincial correctional institutions and civic detention centres titled Why the Caged Bird Sings. She is also collaborating with various Indigenous language speakers and emerging songwriters on an international songwriting project and operates Miyoh Music, an Indigenous niche music publishing company.

From 2009 to 2011, imagineNATIVE Film + Media Festival invited L'Hirondelle to curate their first three new media exhibitions: Codetalkers of the Digital Divide (or why we didn't become "roadkill on the information superhighway"), RE:counting coup and S-O-S3 (signals of survival). She has also been involved in a variety of media arts initiatives including: Smartlab Associate Researcher, 2005–07; Banff New Media Institute Advisory Committee, 2006; Canada Council Media Arts Advisory Committee, 1997–2001; KIDS FROM KANATA On-line Aboriginal Liaison (with Buffy Sainte Marie), 1995-96; and Drum Beats to Drum Bytes Thinktank, 1994.

Cheryl is currently a member of the OCAD University Indigenous Education Council and has recently begun post-graduate research-creation at UCD, Dublin, Ireland.

Cheryl L'Hirondelle Website

Cheryl L'Hirondelle Bandcamp

Song Lines Project

Medicine Path Project

#callresponse project details:

Conversation with Artist Ursula A. Johnson

March 15, 2016 by Ginger Dunnill

Broken Boxes Podcast is proud to share the first artist conversation in a series of interviews featuring participants from the socially engaged project #callresponse.

In this episode we get into conversation with Ursula A. Johnson, a performance and installation artist of Mi’kmaw descent. Ursula breaks down what her practice consists of, her inspirations for becoming an artist, the concepts her work explores and description of recent works. Ursula also speaks on her endurance performance work for The Land Sings and her reflections on the #callresponse project.

"In the topics and themes I examine through performance, sculpture and or installation and sometimes all of the above; I aim at creating a space where the viewer is confronted with thought provoking visuals, sounds and scents. Often challenging the viewer to investigate their own Identity, as well as examining the relationship that their ancestry and cultural practices relates to that of mine." -Ursula A. Johnson

Here is the conversation with Ursula A. Johnson:

Subscribe to Broken Boxes Podcast on iTunes HERE to stream and download this episode

Music in this episode from the album Power in the Blood by Buffy Sainte-Marie

More about the artist:

Ursula A. Johnson is a performance and installation artist of Mi’kmaw descent. People who attend her performances are often surprised to find themselves no longer spectators, but actors in a social situation. Instead of the private, contemplative response we usually expect from the encounter with a work of art, we become participants in collective interpretations and collaborative actions.

Ursula Johnson holds a BFA (2006) from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where she studied photography, drawing and textiles. She also studied Theatre at Cape Breton University. Johnson descends from a long line of Mi’kmaw Artists, including her late Great-Grandmother, Caroline Gould, from whom she learned basket making. In 2010 she curated Klokowej: A 30-Year Retrospective commemorating Gould’s contribution to the evolution of Mi’kmaw basketry.

Ursula Johnson’s approach to basketry is typical of her transformational practice. Rather than simply imitating traditional Mi’kmaw basket forms she uses traditional techniques to build subtly non-functional forms—objects that are clearly traditionally based yet raised to a metaphorical level of signification, as works of art. Several of her performances, including Elmiet (2010) and Basket Weaving (2011) incorporate basketry as a key element.

Her background in theatre is evident in her public performances. People who attend Johnson’s performances are often surprised to find themselves no longer spectators, but actors in a social situation. Instead of the private, contemplative response we usually expect from the encounter with a work of art, we become participants in collective interpretations and collaborative actions.

Artist Project Details:

Ursula A. Johnson Ketapekiaq Maqamikew – The Land Sings follows from an audiobased endurance performance wherein Johnson collaborated with a Mi’kmaw singer/songwriter in Antigonish, NS to create a song for the land. The land is recognized as a feminine body and a matriarch by several Indigenous nations. Urban development and the disregard to the natural environment resonated with the artist in the development of this series. Children who attended residential schools were distanced from their homes, territory and the land. The traditional songs and voices of many First Nations were also displaced because of this process. Johnson’s project posits song as a positive force that brings people together in the act of singing. The premise of the piece is to create a song that is an apology to the land for the ways in which our human impact has shifted and shaped the landscape.

Photo credit: Henry Chan, Nikamon Ochi Askiy (Ke’tapekiaq Ma’qimikew): The Land Sings, Ursula Johnson created in collaboration with Cheryl L’Hirondelle, presented by FADO Performance Art Centre 2016. — Photo credit: Henry Chan, Nikamon Ochi Askiy (Ke’tapekiaq Ma’qimikew): The Land Sings, Ursula Johnson created in collaboration with Cheryl L’Hirondelle, presented by FADO Performance Art Centre 2016.

The original work was created by mapping a line on a topographical map from the customary land territory of the local Indigenous peoples to the closest, largest urban centre, from which a score was developed. Building on this, Johnson performed the fourth visitation of the project in Toronto ON in collaboration with interdisciplinary artist Cheryl L’Hirondelle (Metis/Cree) as part of MONOMYTHS, programmed by FADO Performance Art Centre. The fifth visitation of the work will take place in Vancouver BC sited in the traditional territory of one of the local First Nations (Musqueam, Squamish, TsleilWaututh) as a way of addressing the history of division caused by the residential school system and colonialism more broadly.
The points of connection created through song span the country from its eastern to western shores, coming full circle to encompass both the diversity and specificity of the Indigenous nations within its boundaries. Johnson will collaborate with a local singer/songwriter to create a song of recognition and apology to the land, focusing on four themes related to this: a survey, an intervention, a celebration and a mourning. The performance will occur shortly before the exhibition opening (October 2016), presented as a continuous live vocal performance that will run for the duration of 46 hours. The water and land of the surrounding territory will witness the song along with being open to the public. An audio recording and visual representations of the topographical score will be included on the project website and exhibition.

Ursula Johnson, Ke'tapekiaq Ma'qimikew: The Land Sings, Cape Breton Visitation 2015. Photo: Dr. Marcia Ostashkewski. Courtesy of the Artist.

#callresponse Project Details:

Listen to Broken Boxes Podcast #callresponse introduction interview here