Maria Hupfield and Charlene Vickers: Jingles and Sounds for Speaking to Our Grandmothers

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Maria Hupfield and Charlene Vickers, "Jingles and Sounds for Speaking to Our Grandmothers," 2019

Opening Reception: Friday February 1, 6 - 8 PM

In Fall 2018, Anishinaabe artists Maria Hupfield and Charlene Vickers continued their cross-continental collaboration by creating a monumental jingle cone. Made with the simple materials of coloured felt and construction paper, the cone is a device for reciprocity through speaking and listening. The work is an hommage to Rebecca Belmore’s Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother (1991, 1992, 1996), a huge megaphone for speaking to the land, installed in Banff National Park. Through a series of performances at the 2018 Seattle Art Fair, Hupfield and Vickers activated their cone to explore its musical potential, communicate with each other, and converse with their grandmothers. This exhibition brings together documentation of the performances in Seattle, the jingle cone itself, and a new series of drawings made from the original performance costumes.

Charlene Vickers is an Anishinaabe artist living and working in Vancouver. Born in Kenora, Ontario and raised in Toronto, her painting, sculpture, and performance works explore memory, healing, and embodied connections to ancestral lands. Vicker’s work has been exhibited across Canada and the United States, and can be found in the permanent collection at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. In 2015, she participated in the group exhibitions The Fifth World at the Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon (curated by Wanda Nanibush), and Custom Made at Kamloops Art Gallery (curated by Tania Willard). In 2018 she was the recipient of the VIVA Award.

Maria Hupfield is a citizen of the Anishinaabek Nation from Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario, Canada. Currently based in Brooklyn, NY, her practice extends through performance, installation, sculpture, video, photography, and collage. Her approach draws from Anishinaabe traditions and the history of performance to create actions and objects that function as mediators between the body and the natural or urban environment. Hupfield’s first major institutional solo exhibit The One Who Keeps on Giving, travelled across Canada, and to Paris, in 2018. She is the first Indigenous Fellow at the International Studio and Curatorial Program, ISCP in New York 2018.