January 22 – April 12, 2020
Winter Season Opening Reception: Wednesday, January 22, 2020 at 7 pm
Featuring works that span performance, video, sculpture, and textiles, Rupture provides a window into the transdisciplinary practice of artist Maria Hupfield. Informed by Anishinaabe cultural knowledge, Hupfield connects performance art and object-making with both Indigenous and feminist narratives. Bringing common, everyday materials into the gallery, her work speaks to a tradition of DIY and anti-aesthetic methods, challenging our expectations of how these materials operate in our contemporary moment while connecting them to wider histories unfolding within the Americas. Non-hierarchical and dynamic, the installation explores ideas of mobility and experimentation, activating place, lived experience, and cultural practices in order to centre the work of resistance. Highlighting pieces that engender multiple forms of engagement and reflection, all work in tandem to remind us that the body is the first site of truth in the story of decolonization.
Awarded the 2018 Hnatyshyn Foundation prize for outstanding achievement by a Canadian mid-career artist, Maria Hupfield’s first major solo exhibition, The One Who Keeps on Giving, was produced and circulated by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. Her work has also been presented at the Museum of Arts and Design, BRIC, and Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and was featured at SITE Santa Fe (2016), as well as within Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture (2012-14). Recent performances include the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Brooklyn Museum. Her upcoming solo project, Nine Years Towards The Sun, opened at the Heard Museum, Phoenix, on December 6, 2019. Together with Jason Lujan, she co-owns Native Art Department International and was recently appointed Professor of Indigenous Media Arts + Performance, with a Canada Research Chair in Transdisciplinary Indigenous Arts at the University of Toronto. Based in Toronto, Hupfield is Anishinaabe and an off-rez citizen of Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario.
Rupture is curated by Sally Frater and organized by the Art Gallery of Guelph with the support of the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts. The Art Gallery of Guelph wishes to thank Galerie Hugues Charbonneau.
Rupture and Repair
A Conversation with Maria Hupfield and Kim Anderson
Using her work KA-POW! as a starting point for discussion, artist Maria Hupfield joined Dr. Kim Anderson, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Relationships at the University of Guelph, in a virtual Zoom discussion to explore how the piece serves as a platform that ignites discussion about the natural world, Indigenous feminisms, art, and politics. KA-POW! is featured in the exhibition Rupture. Read the transcript of their discussion >
Dr. Kim Anderson is a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Relationships and an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition at the University of Guelph. She has published over thirty peer-reviewed book chapters and articles covering the subjects of Indigenous female identity, Indigenous mothering, Indigenous family well-being, Indigenous feminism, Indigenous women and governance, Indigenous masculinities, and research ethics in Indigenous communities. Dr. Anderson is the single author of two books (A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood, 2nd Edition, Canadian Scholar’s Press, 2016; and Life Stages and Native Women: Memory, Teachings and Story Medicine, University of Manitoba Press, 2011), and has recently published her fourth co-edited book—a scholarly anthology about missing and murdered Indigenous women, co-edited with Maria Campbell and Christi Belcourt (Keetsahnak: Our Missing and Murdered Indigenous Sisters, University of Alberta Press, 2018).
Gallery
(Click to view)
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Image detail: Maria Hupfield, KA-POW!, 2017, cedar and paint, 12 x 10.5 x 10 ft.