Maria Hupfield

MARIA HUPFIELD (she/her)
Maria is an artist and transdisciplinary maker working with Industrial felt at the intersection of performance art, design and sculpture; Assistant Professor in Indigenous Performance and Digital Arts, and also a Canadian Research Chair in Transdisciplinary Indigenous Arts, Director / Lead Artist of the Indigenous Creation Studio, Department of Visual Studies / English and Drama, at the University of Toronto Mississauga, with a grad appointment in the Master of Visual Studies, Daniels, University of Toronto.

She lives in Toronto and is the Inaugural ArtworxTO Artist in Residency with the City of Toronto, Parks and Recreation, as well as a Mellon Fellow, Center for the Imagination in the Borderlands, Arizona State University, USA, 2022.

Maria has exhibited extensively including the solo exhibition Nine Years Towards the Sun, at the Heard Museum, Phoenix (2019–20), following her first major touring solo exhibition with monograph, The One Who Keeps on Giving, organized by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto (2017–18). Maria Hupfield has presented her work at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; the BRIC House Gallery in Brooklyn, New York; the Bronx Museum, New York; Gibney Dance, New York; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; Site Santa Fe; Panoply Performance Lab, Brooklyn; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; and Galerie de L’UQAM in Montreal; with work in private and public collections including: the Art Gallery of Ontario, National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa; the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of the American Indian, New York; the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art; Forge Projects, New York; and the Nordamerika Native Museum in Zurich, Switzerland, amongst others.

Maria's work with Industrial felt, performance forms, and present-day materials crosses boundaries and operates at the intersection of Anishinaabek cultural knowledge / methodologies and Western based art practices. She is Canadian like her white settler father, and Anishinaabe like her late mother, and belongs to Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario, Canada. Maria's work in the institution seeks to promote accountability to Indigenous people; and looks to model new ways of connecting with Indigenous communities through arts-based practices; and establish respectful ongoing relationships with Indigenous peoples, language, and land. Her current research team at the University has three components that function as interventions and sites of learning: 1) Mushkiki Gitigan; 2) Indigenous Creation Studio; and 3) Virtual Living Archive.

Stay in touch with Maria Hupfield on Instagram: @mariahupfield