Maria Hupfield - July 2023

Maria Hupfield in the Hallam Studio. Photo by Heather Henriksen.

Transdisciplinary artist Maria Hupfield crosses boundaries at the intersection of performance art, design and sculpture. Her work positions art objects as active belongings where sculptures become performers in a form of object choreography between artist, audience, and art gallery. Engaged in an ongoing series of relations with community, places, ideas, and materials her influences include: Robert Morris, Simone Forti, Lydia Clark, Yoku Ono, James Luna, Joseph Beuys, Rebecca Belmore, and Rebecca Horn. An Urban off-reservation member of the Anishinaabek People belonging to Wasauksing First Nation in Ontario, Canada, Hupfield is deeply invested in embodied practice, Native Feminisms, and ethical collaborative process. She is currently the inaugural ArtworxTO Legacy Artist in Residence (AiR) Program with the City of Toronto, and a Mellon Distinguished Fellow, Center for the Imagination in the Borderlands, Arizona State University (2022).This past summer she won the coveted Toronto Friends of Visual Arts Award and began her term as a nominated Lucas Artist Residence Fellow at the Montalvo Art Center in California. In 2018 she was awarded the outstanding achievement by a Canadian mid-career artist by the Hnatyshyn Foundation. Her art has been exhibited at the New York Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, the New York Museum of Art and Design, BRIC House Gallery, the Bronx Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Site Santa Fe, The Heard Museum, and in Canada at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Galerie de L’UQAM, and the NOMAM in Zurich.

Visit Maria’s website here.

Maria Hupfield