Post-Show Discussion Moderated by Emily Johnson Friday, December 8
DoublePlus presents three weeks of shared evenings for which established artist-curators each choose a pair of emerging artists and mentor them through the creative, production and audience development processes.
From Curator Emily Johnson:
“I am thrilled to present three artists working a futurity embedded within relationships of language, land and present action. Maria Hupfield is Anishinaabe and a member of Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario. Hupfield works with performance and sculpture. Her hand-sewn creations function as tools carried on the body—tracking rhythms, identifying areas (within body, within culture, within life) that warrant open communication, protection or both. She works the reflection of sight, sound and object to generate the unexpected—to shift meaning. Dr. Mique’l Dangeli is of the Tsimshian Nation of Metlakatla, Alaska. Mike Dangeli is of the Nisga’a, Tlingit, Tsetsaut, and Tsimshian Nations. Since 1999 Mique’l Dangeli and Mike Dangeli have led Git Hayetsk, an internationally renowned dance group specializing in ancient and newly created songs and mask dances. Through their work they have focused on Northwest Coast First Nations and Alaska Native visual and performing arts, protocol, politics, sovereignty, language revitalization and decolonization.”
Where do you speak from? Locating languages in the body, land, and waterways
Dr. Mique’l Dangeli & Mike Dangeli
In a time where diversity is treated as a threat to society, language is at the center of the assimilation efforts that inform immigration policies in the US. Most Americans are well aware of the government’s push to shift language dominance in away from Spanish to English. Less well known is the fact that these policies perpetuate the marginalization of Indigenous languages, a practice that has existed in the US since the arrival of the first settlers. The majority of these languages are now near extinction. The piece focuses on the hardships and victories of the artists’ engagement in revitalizing their own critically endangered Indigenous language.
Electric Prop and Hum Freestyle Variations
Maria Hupfield
In New York City everything is happening all at once allowing for constant multiple readings by different people across culture, gender, race and class. For Electric Prop and Hum Freestyle Variations, Maria Hupfield establishes an improvisational practice utilizing movement, sound, and vocalizations to intervene in the Theatre. Transforming everyday relatable materials from our surroundings, each performance informs later ones, creating a living, ever-evolving art experience that is the essence of this practice. Hupfield has created a set of objects made from industrial felt and sound tools that are worn, carried, and activated throughout the performance, with a new special guest each night.
About the Artists
Born and raised on the Annette Island Indian Reserve, Sm Łoodm ’Nüüsm (Dr. Mique’l Dangeli) is of the Tsimshian Nation of Metlakatla, Alaska. She is a dancer, choreographer, curator, and activist. She has her PhD from the University of British Columbia in art history. Her work focuses on Northwest Coast First Nations and Alaska Native visual and performing arts, protocol, politics, sovereignty, language revitalization, and decolonization. For the past fourteen years, she and her husband Mike Dangeli have shared the leadership of Git Hayetsk, an internationally renowned dance group specializing in ancient and newly created songs and mask dances.
Mike Dangeli is of the Nisga’a, Tlingit, Tsetsaut, and Tsimshian Nations. Since childhood, he has trained under the chiefs, matriarchs, and other leaders of his clan to become a hereditary chief. Through this training, he began studying and creating his people’s art at an early age and went on to apprentice and study with many master carvers. Mike is a renowned artist and carver whose work is collected and exhibited throughout North America, Asia, and Europe. He is a singer, composer, and dancer. He carved hundreds of masks and headdress use in the performances of Git Hayetsk as well as in the ceremonies of many Nations along the Northwest Coast.
Maria Hupfield is based in Brooklyn, she is Anishinaabe and a member of Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario. Her recent traveling solo exhibition, The One Who Keeps on Giving, opened the 30th Anniversary season of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto; in partnership with Galerie de l’UQAM, Montréal; Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, Halifax; and the Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris. Hupfield’s work process is currently on exhibit as part of Studio Views: Craft in the Expanded Field Museum of Arts and Design where she is workshopped and presented Electric Prop and Hum Freestyle Variations onsite. She participated in the 2016 SITELines Biennial, Santa Fe and is a Joan Mitchell Foundation recipient. Hupfield recently co-organized Crossroads: Art + Native Feminisms, a day of Indigenous Feminist panels with CAA2017 at the Museum of Arts + Design NY, and the traveling exhibition #callresponse a Canada Council Arts {Re}Conciliation Initiative. She was an artist resident with 2017 Indigenous Intensive UBCO Kelowna BC, 2014 AIM Program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the 2013 Winter Studio Residency Wave Hill NY, Open Studios Museum of Arts and Design 2012 and the 2012 Artist Leadership Program, Smithsonian Washington DC. Her nine-foot birchbark canoe made of industrial felt was performed in Venice, Italy for the premiere of Jiimaan, 2015. Hupfield is the founder of 7th Generation Image Makers, a native youth arts and mural program in Toronto, and co-owner of the Native Art Department International with artist Jason Lujan.
Electric Djinn has played at Topaz Arts in Queens for a Yolanda relief fund raiser for the Philippines and most recently collaborated there with the Ged Aze project with live dancers Aze Ong and Paz Tanjuaquio. Based in New York she spends her free time surfing in Rockaway beach.
maria hupfield 