Playing Tricks:
Works By Barry Ace and Maria Hupfield

In the oral traditions of the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) culture, the presence and lore surrounding Nanabush (or Naanabozho), a transformational and compassionate Woodland trickster, is central to the teachings of life’s lessons. Artists Barry Ace and Maria Hupfield learned their lessons well and embrace the dynamic spirit of Nanabush, who dwells deep within their conscious, informing their artwork in a multitude of ways. The gallery is their playground, a metamorphic space for negotiating and mapping out both a distinct and common ground that will ensure the strength of Anishinaabe tradition in the face of transition. Informed by the past and actively engaged in the present, Hupfield and Ace nourish one another’s compassion for creativity by affirming a space for their communities to prosper and Nanabush’s influence to be felt.

Ace and Hupfield apply a wily sensibility, yet cautious responsibility to their artwork when facing issues and confronting narratives related to history, popular culture, society and politics. By liberating humour, irony and mischief from the confines of oral tradition, the artist invoke a playfulness that reflects and personifies the Indigenous experience in a state of constant adjustment. Through various media and materials, the artists adapt traditional motifs and design, informed by an Anishinaabe aesthetic, to create contemporary works that are innovative and discerning. Such incorporated elements of beauty and adornment emanate a desire, informed by tradition, for a constant cultural continuity to prosper.

Consequently, Ace summons Nanabush’s energy into his urban Aboriginal pop icon Super Phat Nish, a character who engages with diverse subcultures in order to bring meaning and understanding to an existing contemporary urban/suburban world of Native America. Hupfield mischievously re-imagines those “defining lines” that bind, by symbolically re-interpreting them through installation and sculpture. Her “redrawn” lines are positioned conceptually as assertive marks to identify, honor and affirm an indigenous presence that is in flux. In doing so, Ace and Hupfield mediate between popular culture and antiquated notions of indigeniety imagined as stagnant and still. Playing Tricks is an evocative strategy for stirring attention to matters of contemporary Anishinaabe life lessons for generations to come.

Nanabush was definitely here.

Ryan Rice
Guest Curator