Episode 48. Interview with Maria Hupfield

Broken Boxes Podcast

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:

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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.

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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.