Next Performing Arts | Interdisciplinary

Maria Hupfield, Natalie Diaz, Lisa Le Feuvre, and Mikinaak Migwans

Channeling Greater Power

Maria Hupfield stands in a spotlight onstage wearing a black button-down shirt and jeans. Her silhouette is visible in a large circle of light behind her.

Reflect on artists and ancestors who are important to Maria Hupfield’s and Nancy Holt’s art and ideas explored in the current exhibitions at the Wex.

Join a performative gathering with artist Maria Hupfield, guest curator Lisa Le Feuvre, multimedia artist and scholar Mikinaak Migwans, and poet and writer Natalie Diaz to call upon the artists and ancestors who surround Holt’s and Hupfield’s artistic practices. Explore the artwork and learn from the artists through conversations engaging with the past by calling on memory and legacy within their respective exhibitions, The Endless Return of Fabulous Panther (Biimskojiwan) and Power Systems. The experience will heighten your respect and reverence for those who have come before us.

IMAGE CAPTION
Maria Hupfield, Fixed Time, 2012; performance during 7a*11d International Performance Art Festival, Toronto; photo: Henry Chan.

"For me, performance art is very social. There is a lot of trust—trusting myself and building trust with others."
Maria Hupfield

About the participants

Natalie Diaz chevron-down chevron-up

Natalie Diaz was born in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, and is a member of the Gila River Indian Tribe (Akimel O’odham). She is the author of Postcolonial Love Poem, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and has been awarded MacArthur Foundation and Mellon Foundation fellowships. Diaz is founding director of the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands and chair in modern and contemporary poetry at Arizona State University, where she is a professor in the English MFA program. Diaz resides in Phoenix, Arizona, where she continues the life-long work of documenting Native and Indigenous languages.

Maria Hupfield chevron-down chevron-up

Maria Hupfield merges performance art, design, and sculpture, drawing from Indigenous storytelling traditions through art, scholarship, collaboration, and social justice.
 
Hupfield was the inaugural ArtworxTO Legacy Artist in Residence with the City of Toronto and a recipient of the Hnatyshyn Mid-Career Award for Outstanding Achievement and the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Artist Prize, among others. Her work has been exhibited, performed, and collected across North America. She is co-owner of Native Art Department International with her husband, artist Jason Lujan.
 
Hupfield is Martin clan and an off-reservation member of the Anishinaabe Nation belonging to Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario. Since 2019, she has served as a Canada research chair in transdisciplinary Indigenous art and an assistant professor of Indigenous digital arts and performance in the Department of Visual Studies and the Department of English & Drama at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

Lisa Le Feuvre chevron-down chevron-up

Lisa Le Feuvre is a curator, writer, and editor. She is the inaugural executive director of Holt/Smithson Foundation, the artist-endowed foundation dedicated to the creative legacies of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. Between 2010 and 2017 Le Feuvre was head of sculpture studies at the Henry Moore Institute, directing the research component of the largest artist-endowed foundation in Europe, leading programs of education, research, collections, publications, and exhibitions focused on sculptural thinking. She has curated more than 70 exhibitions as an institutional and independent curator, played a pivotal role in shaping academic and arts organizations, edited over 30 books and journals, spoken at museums and universities across the world, and has published more than 100 essays and interviews with artists.

Mikinaak Migwans chevron-down chevron-up

Mikinaak Migwans is a member of Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory, an assistant professor in the Department of Art History, and curator of Indigenous art in the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. Their research focuses on the politics of placemaking from the land to the museum, with special emphasis on textile arts in Anishinaabe territory. Migwans has worked with the Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts & Culture at Carleton University, the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation in M’Chigeeng First Nation, and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.

PERFORMING ARTS PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY

Doris Duke Foundation
 
MARIA HUPFIELD: THE ENDLESS RETURN OF FABULOUS PANTHER (BIIMSKOJIWAN) IS MADE POSSIBLE BY

Ohio State Energy Partners
 
EXHIBITIONS 2024–25 SEASON MADE POSSIBLE BY

Bill and Sheila Lambert

Crane Family Foundation
 
FREE GALLERIES MADE POSSIBLE BY

Adam Flatto

PNC Foundation
 
LEARNING & PUBLIC PRACTICE PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY

CoverMyMeds

Huntington
 
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY

Ohio Arts Council

The Ohio State University Office of Outreach & Engagement

Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation

Martha Holden Jennings Foundation
 
SUPPORT FOR LEARNING & PUBLIC PRACTICE RESIDENCIES PROVIDED BY

Mike and Paige Crane
 
WEXNER CENTER PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY

Greater Columbus Arts Council

The Wexner Family

Institute of Museum and Library Services

Mellon Foundation

Every Page Foundation

Ohio Arts Council, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts

CampusParc

Nationwide Foundation

Lois S. and H. Roy Chope Fund of The Columbus Foundation

The Columbus Foundation

Axium Packaging
 
ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY

Ohio History Fund/Ohio History Connection

David Crane and Elizabeth Dang
Louise Lambert Braver

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Maria Hupfield, Natalie Diaz, Lisa Le Feuvre, and Mikinaak Migwans