Maria Hupfield

Assistant Professor Indigenous Digital Arts and Performance
Canadian Research Chair Transdisciplinary Indigenous Arts

Undergraduate Cross-Appointment: Department of Visual Studies (UTM) and Department of English (UTM)
Graduate Appointment: Department of Visual Studies, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design (St. George)

“My work exists at the intersection of Anishinaabek cultural knowledge and Western based art practices. Previously based in Brooklyn for the past 9 years, I am Canadian like my settler father and Anishinaabe like my late mother, as well as an off-rez citizen of Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario. My strategies to disrupt and deconstruct colonial spaces transform institutional models of trust building and strengthen Indigenous peoples in our homelands resourcefully through art. My commitment to art based practices expands conversations on North American Indigenous bodies that crossover the Nation State borders of Canada and the United States of America. I view Indigeneity as mobile from multiple positions to free it from reductive singular readings. My projects position Indigenous arts as a technologically advanced and active living presence across time and into the future, expanding and contracting from the local to the global.” By Maria Hupfield

An alumna of UTM, Hupfield has been at the cutting edge of art and public engagement for many years, from her early work as founder of 7th Generation Image Makers, Native Child + Family Services of Toronto, forging partnerships with the Art Gallery of Ontario, Charles Street Video, and ImagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival, and the Toronto Indigenous community to recent collaborative performances with musicians and artists including her commission of five multimedia projects for Toronto’s Nuit Blanche (2017).

Hupfield was awarded the Hnatyshyn Foundation prize for outstanding achievement by a Canadian mid-career artist (2018). Her first major institutional solo exhibition The One Who Keeps on Giving was a production of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, in partnership with Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; Galerie de l’UQAM, Montréal; Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, Halifax; and the Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris (2017-18). Her work has shown in New York at the Museum of Arts and Design, BRIC, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian; represented Canada at SITE Santa Fe (2016), and travelled nationally across Canada with Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture (2012-14). Recent performances include Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Brooklyn Museum, Para\\el Performance Gallery in Brooklyn, and Gibney Dance. Hupfield is a Guest Curator, Artist of Color Council Movement Research at Judson Church Fall 2019/Winter 2020 Season. Her upcoming solo Nine Years Towards The Sun opens at the Heard Museum, Phoenix December (2019). Together with her husband artist Jason Lujan she co-owns Native Art Department International.

Current Research Projects

Hupfield’s five-year research program in Indigenous Digital Arts and Performance is grounded in her transdisciplinary art practice and collaboration while prioritizing an increased understanding of the world through hands-on experience and direct dialogue with others. It seeks to change the way that universities are accountable to Indigenous people; it models new ways of connecting with Indigenous communities through arts-based practices; and it establishes respectful ongoing relationships with Indigenous peoples and land. Hupfield’s research program has three components: 1) Community Medicine Garden; 2) Indigenous Creation Studio; 3) Living Archive. Each space will both constitute and facilitate the development of creative work grounded in Indigenous oral traditions and the natural world. Hupfield’s research will move traditional and digital art from the land to the classroom and into virtual space. She is dedicated to dynamic scholarship that probes the development and maintenance of good relations with land and within communities. The projects will model accountable collaboration with Indigenous peoples grounded in non-competitive community building, social practice art, wellness, Indigenous knowledge, land sovereignty, and LGBTQ2+ inclusivity, especially for Indigenous trans and queer people of color, and two-spirit folx. Hupfield aims to build networks of awakened solidarity, fueling the movement for resurgence, decolonization, and reclamation of Indigenous homelands in North America.

Undergraduate

FAH275H5F: Introduction to Indigenous Art in Canada

Graduate

VIS1001/2001: INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIO 1 & 3, Graduate Seminar, Daniels School, St. George

Recent Exhibitions

(forthcoming) 9 Years Towards the Sun (solo, catalog), Heard Musuem, Phoenix AZ. December 6, 2019 - July 6, 2020. Curator: Erin Joyce, Fine Arts Curator

(forthcoming) Counter-Landscapes: Performative Actions from the 1970s - Now (catalog), Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale AZ, October 26, 2019 — January 26, 2020. Curator: Jennifer McCabe, Director / Chief Curator

(forthcoming) Untitled, Center[3], Hamilton ON, October 4 - 23, 2019. Curator: Sally Frater.

Mega Sonic Jingle, Everyonce, Trinity Square Video, Toronto ON, July 13 - 27, 2019. Curator: Mitchell Akiyama

What is Here is Open: Selections from the Treasures in the Trash Museum (catalogue), Hunter East Harlem Gallery, Harlem NY, June 26 - September 14, 2019. Curator: Alicia Grullion and Nelson Molina.

Niigaanikwewag II, Art Gallery of Mississauga, ON. March 29 - June 16, 2019. Curator: Rheanne Chartand. https://www.artgalleryofmississauga.com/niigaanikwewag2

Here We Land (catalogue), Glyndor Gallery WaveHill, Bronx NY, April 14 - July 14. 2019, Curator: Jennifer McGregor, Senior Curator/Director Arts, Education and Programs. https://www.wavehill.org/arts/exhibits/here-we-land/

Family Herstory with Nicole Wallace, Para\\el Performance Space, Brooklyn NY, March 7, 2019.

Curatorial Projects

(forthcoming) Guest Artist of Color Council Movement Research, Judson Church, 2019/2020 Season.

(forthcoming) TBA, Art Gallery of New Jersey, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, 2020/2021.

#callresponse, (Traveling with catalog) Co-conspirators Maria Hupfield, Tania Willard, and Tarah Hogue, a presentation by grunt gallery, Vancovuer BC, Blackwood Gallery Toronto, Saw Gallery Ottawa, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts NY, 2016/2018. Featuring 5 art commissions by Laakkuluk Williamson Bathroy with Tania Tagaq, Ursula Johnson with Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Christi Belcourt and Isaac Murdock, Tania  Willard with Marcia Crosby, Maria Hupfield with IV Castellanos and Esther Neff.

Life On Neebahgeezis: A Luminous Engagement, Many Possible Futures Nuit Blanche, Toronto ON, 2017. Featuring 5 site specific art commissions by Marianne Nicolson, Julie Nagam, Cherish Violet Blood, Aanmitaagzi, Siku Allooloo and Jaskiran Dhillon.

First Things Don’t Come First, Co-curated as Native Art Department International with Jason Lujan, The Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film, Durham ON, 2017.

From The Belly of The Beast: A Night of Native and Non-Native Feminist Performances, Co-curated with Katya Grokhovsky, Grace Exhibition Space Co- Presented by The Feminist Art Project, Brooklyn NY, Feb 17 2017.

Editorial Projects / Publications

(accepted, forthcoming) Hupfield, Maria. “Dancing for Spirit, Family, Community, and Culture, Part I and II,” Sovereign Movements: Native Dance and Performance Transiting Territories, Guest Editors Rosy Simas and Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhran, Native Movement Issue of Movement Research Performance Journal (Fall 2019), 4 pages.

(accepted, forthcoming) Hupfield, Maria, and Lujan, Jason. “Older Than the Dawn”. Crossroads – New views on Land and Environmental Art. Editor Ilari Laamanen. (New York, University of Arts Helsinki & Finnish Cultural Institute, 2019)

Native Art Department International (Maria Hupfield and Jason Lujan).* “Sovereign Capitals.” Site/ation. Guest editors BUSH gallery, Peter Morin, and Tania Willard. Special issue of cmagazine 136 (Winter 2018). Double-page spread insert.

http://cmagazine.com/issues/136

Hupfield, Maria. “Chance Favors Those in Motion.” Transfers, Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies 7.3 (2017): 117–126.

https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/transfers/7/3/trans070310.xml

Hupfield, Maria and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory. “Unmasking Greenland’s Uaajeerneq: Maria Hupfield Interviewing Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory Part 1.” Incident Magazine (2 May 2014). WEB https://incidentmag.com/2014/05/02/unmasking-greenlands-uaajeerneq-maria-hupfield-interviewing-laakkuluk-williamson-bathory-part-1/

Hupfield, Maria and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathroy.* “From The Moon To The Belly.” FUSE 35-2/States of Postcoloniality/NORTH/PROJECT (Spring 2012). Limited edition 7 postcard set insert. *As collaborators Laakkuluk Williamson Bathroy and I developed a seven-card limited edition postcard project and socio-cultural exchange. Each copy of the print edition of FUSE 35-2 States of Postcoloniality/NORTH contained one of the seven postcards.

Hupfield, Maria. “Auto-mnemonic Six Nations Greg Staats.” Brunt Magazine 4 (2008). http://www.bruntmag.com/issue4/assets/brunt_issue4.pdf

Hupfield, Maria. “Aboriginal Art Practice from Quillboxes and Kitchens to Totem Poles.” In Tania Willard, ed., Access All Areas: Conversations on Engaged Arts (Vancouver, British Columbia: Grunt Gallery, 2008): 83-90

Artist Talks and Workshops

The Other Side of The Story: Accountability and Ethics Workshop with Regan De Loggans, Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, New York, May 9, 2019.

Artist Talk with Jason Lujan, Curatorial Practice graduate program at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Baltimore, March 5, 2019, Gee Wesley Professor

Artist Residency Visit with Jason Lujan at Bard Graduate Center with History and Theory of Socially Engaged Art Class, Queens College, New York, April 8, 2019, Greg Sholette Professor Met Roundtables Contemporary Native Art at the Met with Jason Lujan, Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, NY, Feb 22, 2019

Keynote, Ivy Native Council Fall Summit: Expansion, Intervention, and Refusal: Representing Indigeneity through Art, Columbia University, NY 2018

Coffee & Conversation: Reenactment, BRIC Media Arts, Brooklyn NY 2018

Indigenous New York Artists Perspectives, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, NY 2017

Accountability and Activation, Cornell University Department of Art, NY 2017, Jolene Rickard Professor

Art, Artists and Social Change, Graduate class, NYU NY, Dr. Marta Moreno Vega Professor  2017

In Conversation: Maria Hupfield speaks with Carolin Kochling, The Power Plant ON

Matriarchal Action + Art, A Conversation with Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Maria Hupfield moderated by Lowery Stokes Sims, College Art Association NY 2017

Artist As Ally, ABC No Rio in Exile at Flux Factory NY 2017

In Various Tongues, Grupo <11> Satellite Project, Pioneer Books Pioneer Works, NY 2017

Disarming Geometries: A Curator/Artists Tour, Dorsky Gallery, Long Island, NY 2017

Tanya Tagaq: Indigenous Rights/Indigenous Oppression, School of Public Policy and The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center University of Maryland, College Park, 2016

Visiting Artist Program, Queensborough Community College Art and Design Department, Kat Griefen Professor, 2016

Accomplice & Art Practice Indigenous Feminist Activism & Performance, Yale MacMillan Center Committee on Canadian Studies, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies (WGSS), and the Native American Cultural Center, TL Cowan Professor, 2016

Distinguished Visiting Artist Program, the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia, 2016.

Conferences and Panels

Creative Practice in Indigenous Communities a conversation with Patrick Dean Hubbell, Corrine Hunt and Skeena Reece. Moderator Maria Hupfield. The Bard Graduate Center, New York, NY, Feb 20, 2019

Visible Invisibility: WoC in the Context of the #MeToo Movement with Maria Hupfield, Viva Ruiz, Salamishah Tillet, Scheherazade Tillet, and Jasmine Wahi, Rape, Representation, and Radically The Feminist Art Project at College Art Association TFAP@CAA, New York, Feb 16, 2019

Panel Disucssion + Talk Back, Demian DinéYazhi´: R.I.S.E.: Collective Fury, Recess Gallery, Brooklyn, Feb 9, 2019

Panel Discussion with Dennis Redmoon Darkeem, as Native Art Department International, and Jeffrey Gibson. Moderated by Johanna Burton, The Drawing Center, New York, 2018

Appropriation and Fashion, 1st United Lenape Pow Wow, Park Avenue Armory, New York, 2018

Art Actions: Performance, Dance and Social Movement, Talking About a Revolution Symposium, Stamps Gallery, Ann Arbor MI, 2018

Shared Space Border Crossings, International Gathering Aboriginal Curatorial Collective, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2018

Artist Talk with Gina Adams, Maria Hupfield & Jami Powell, Curator, Hood Museum of Art, Minus Space, Brooklyn NY, 2018

History, Collecting and the Art Object, Contemporary Art Symposium, National Gallery of Canada, 2018

Honoring Our Sisters Roundtable, #callresponse, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, 2018

Co-organizer Crossroads: Art + Native Feminisms, The Feminist Art Project at College Art  Association TFAP@CAA, Museum of Art and Design, New York, 2017

Exhibiting Culture Panel, Anchorage Museum and Barnard College, New York NY