Maria Hupfield will retool the gallery space as a laboratory, as a performance venue, and as an archive that prioritizes and makes space for diverse bodies. The body is a major element to the work of this Canadian / Anishinaabek artist and is heavily represented in the exhibition; from wooden structures that suggest the form of the body to items meant to be worn on the body, it is an active reminder of the artist and of indigenous peoples in North America. Engaging materially, formally, and often conceptually with the practices of artists like Robert Morris, Jimmie Durham, Joseph Beuys, and Claes Oldenburg, Hupfield focuses on the act of space making within the postwar art landscape through disruption, reimagining thematic elements of their work in our present-day postwar environment. She subverts functionality of object by using materials and felt which render their original intention or usage inert. Additionally, the exhibition engages with material investigating the impact and residue of colonial occupation of Indigenous lands.

Maria Hupfield (Wasauksing First Nation/Canada)

Maria Hupfield is Anishinaabe, specifically an Ojibwe and a member of the Wasauksing First Nation, located in Ontario, Canada.  Teaching at the University of Toronto, she works across the fields of fabric arts, sculpture, media, and performance. Her performance practice references Anishinaabeg oral history and feminist performance history. Working between Brooklyn and Toronto, she has exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Design and Wave Hill in New York, 7a*11d International Performance Festival, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, with one-person shows at The Power Plant in Toronto, MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, Galerie L’UQAM in Montreal. She is the founder of 7th Generation Image Makers, an arts and mural program for Native youth in downtown Toronto, and co-owner of Native Art Department International, with Jason Lujan. From 2007 to 2011 she was Assistant Professor in Visual Art and Material Practice at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She is the 2014 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painting and Sculpture Grant. In 2018, Hupfield was awarded the Hnatyshyn Foundation prize for outstanding achievement by a Canadian mid-career artist.