Conversation with Artist Maria Hupfield

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 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.