Maria Hupfield recently relocated from Brooklyn to Toronto to accept the position of Canadian Research Chair of Transdisciplinary Indigenous Arts at the University of Toronto. She is Anishinaabe and a citizen of Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario. Hupfield was awarded the Hnatyshyn Foundation prize for outstanding achievement by a Canadian mid-career artist (2018) and received a Lucas Artists Fellowship in Visual Arts, Architecture & Design (2019-2020). She is a Guest Curator for the Artist of Color Council Movement Research at Judson Church Winter 2020 Season, and an inaugural resident of the Surf Point Foundation Residency 2020, recently with a solo exhibition entitled, Nine years Towards the Sun at the Heard Museum (December, 2019).
MONOMYTHS is conceived and curated by Shannon Cochrane and Jess Dobkin. The series is presented by FADO in the context of Progress.
MONOMYTHS invites a diverse collection of artists, scholars, and activists to revise Joseph Campbell’s conception of the hero’s journey through performance art, lectures, workshops, and other offerings. This new assemblage of non-linear un-narratives proposes a cultural, political and social feminist re-visioning of the world. The MONOMYTHS perception of the universal journey dispels the notion of the lone patriarchal figure on a conquest to vanquish his demons—both inner and outer—in consideration of community, collectivity, and collaboration.
Nikamon Ochi Askiy (Ke’tapekiaq Ma’qimikew): The Land Sings Ursula Johnson, in collaboration with Cheryl L’Hirondelle
Post Performance / Conversation Action Maria Hupfield
Nikamon Ochi Askiy (Ke’tapekiaq Ma’qimikew): The Land Sings is an audio-based endurance performance by Ursula Johnson created in collaboration with Cheryl L’Hirondelle, and is offered as an apology to the land for the ways in which our human impact has shifted and shaped the landscape, displacing the voices of many First Nations.
Ursula Johnson and Maria Hupfield’s works are presented in conjunction with #callresponse, a Canada Council {Re}Conciliation initiative project. #callresponse positions the work of First Nations, Inuit and Métis women and artists as central to the strength and healing of their communities. This socially engaged project focuses on the “act of doing” through performative actions, highlighting the responsibility of voice and necessity of communal dialogue practiced by Indigenous Peoples. #callresponse is a multifaceted project which brings together five site-specific art commissions that invite collaboration with individuals, communities, lands and institutions, culminating in an exhibition in October 2016 at grunt gallery in Vancouver. The The fifth visitation of Ke’tapekiaq Ma’qimikew: The Land Sings will be a part of this exhibition.
Following The Land Sings, Maria Hupfield presents Post Performance / Conversation Action, a hybrid performance and conversation with Ursula Johnson and Cheryl L’Hirondelle on how revitalization, collaboration, and the act of refusal are used in performance art to shape current dialogue on Reconciliation.
This fragrance opens us to the question, has the show started? It's winter, the theatre is colder than the street and the room is filled with people and all their winter smells: wet faux leather, down, too much shampoo, and beer breath. The atmosphere is a trickster. Am I late, am I early?
