Presented in collaboration with the Vera List Center. This program is convened by Maria Hupfield, David Randolph Distinguished Artist-in-Residence and a 2020–2022 Borderlands Fellow, a joint initiative between the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School and the Center for the Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University. It is presented by the Vera List Center in collaboration with Abrons Arts Center as part of Hupfield’s ongoing research into Indigenous performance practices and protocols and her Breaking Protocol Borderlands Fellowship project.

Multidisciplinary artist and performer Ange Loft serves as the evening’s Master of Ceremonies, with performances by Montreal-based The Dime Collective (Eruoma Awashish, Nahka Bertrand, Sarah Cleary, and Sarah Zakaib), artist and educator Dennis RedMoon Darkeem, and Toronto-based performance art band Jane Schoolcraft, with a guest appearance by Nicole Wallace, and Vanessa Dion Fletcher as usher.

ABOUT

Ange Loft (Kahnawà:ke Kanien’kehá:ka, born in Kahnawake, Canada; lives in Toronto, Canada) is associate artistic director of Jumblies Theatre & Arts and an interdisciplinary performing artist and initiator practicing in Toronto. She is also a vocalist with the experimental music and performance art collective Yamantaka//Sonic Titan. Her collaborations use arts-based research, wearable sculpture and theatrical story-weaving to facilitate workshops and theatrical spectacle. Ange authored the “Toronto Indigenous Context Brief” for the Toronto Biennial of Art’s Advisory Council and is a participant of the Rabbit Hole: Pod Theory Residency, 2020.The Dime Collective is based in Montreal and operates between Rome, Italy and Canada. Members include: Eruoma Awashish, Nahka Bertrand, Sarah Cleary and Sarah Zakaib. Drawing from a range of expertise in the visual arts, fashion, pow wow dance culture, and the everyday the group designed a set of wearable art pieces made from dimes that they performed live over the course of the pandemic. They are the recipients of a Canada Council for the Arts Grant and mentored under artist Maria Hupfield.Dennis Redmoon Darkheem is Bronx-born and raised, wind clan, Yamassee Creek-Seminole Native American. An artist and art educator, he has exhibited his work and performed at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Brooklyn Museum of the Arts, Open Sessions at The Drawing Center, La Mama Theater, the Museum of Modern Art, Bronx Art Space, Rush Gallery, The Judaic Museum of Art, and Smack Mellon, and has received fellowships and scholarships from NYSFA, NYC Teachers Foundation, Marko Rothko scholarship, and Price Waterhouse Fellowship award. He participated in Artist residencies at Wave Hill, the Laundromat Project, The Point, Bronx Children’s Museum, I.C.P, and Jamaica Arts Center. Dennis is also the creator and founder of Bronx Artist Day, RedMoon Bronx Soaps and Teas, and The RedMoon Arts Movement Inc, an organization that brings Art and Art resources to young people of the South Bronx and the tri-state area, and supplies young people with the skills necessary to be their own boss. Dennis believes in the philosophy “Art is Power.” Art is a tool, used to inform, engage, inspire, educate, embrace and celebrate one’s uniqueness. When one is open to Arts one is open to the world.Jane Schoolcraftis a three-member performance art band based in Toronto, members include artists, curators, and Indigenous academics, Lisa Myers on guitar, Mikinaak Migwans and Maria Hupfield on vocals and hand drum. The band uses sound and voice to disrupt colonial spaces and speak to prior, persisting Indigenous presences. Members first started singing together at the Anti-Columbus Day action, American Museum of Natural History, New York (2016, 2017), and originally operated out of Brooklyn, New York, as a hand drumming group under the name Nishnaabekwewag Negamonid with poet Nicole Wallace. Public performances include Gallery Garden Party + Maria Hupfield Performance, for the exhibition Storywork: Maria Hupfield, Patel Brown East, Toronto (2021), and the reception of #callresponse at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York (2018).Maria Hupfield is a 2020–2022 inaugural Borderlands Fellow for her project Breaking Protocol at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School and the Center for the Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University, and was awarded the Hnatyshyn Mid-career Award for Outstanding Achievement in Canada 2018. She has exhibited and performed her work through her touring solo exhibition The One Who Keeps On Giving organized by The Power Plant (2017–2018), and solo Nine Years Towards the Sun, at the Heard Museum, Phoenix, (2019–2020). Amongst other places, she has also presented her work at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, the NOMAM in Zurich, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Galerie de L’UQAM, Galerie Hugues Charbonneau, Patel Brown, the New York Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, the New York Museum of Art and Design, BRIC House Gallery, the Bronx Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Site Santa Fe, and the National Gallery of Canada. She is co-owner of Native Art Department International with her husband artist Jason Lujan. She’s a member of the Anishinaabek People and belongs to Wasauksing First Nation in Ontario. She’s currently an Assistant Professor in Indigenous Performance and Media Art, and a Canadian Research Chair in Transdisciplinary Indigenous Arts, at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM).

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is a research center and a public forum for art, culture, and politics. It was established at The New School in 1992—a time of rousing debates about freedom of speech, identity politics, and society’s investment in the arts. A leader in the field, the center is a nonprofit that serves a critical mission: to foster a vibrant and diverse community of artists, scholars, and policymakers who take creative, intellectual, and political risks to bring about positive change.

FUNDING

Maria Hupfield's The Day After Awareness is a 2020–2022 Borderlands Fellowship commissioned project and has been supported by research assistance, production grants, and curatorial guidance by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School and the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University.

ACCESSIBILITY

This event will take place in the Underground Theater and Garden.

The Underground Theater has wheelchair or mobility device seating is only available on the upper level. Views are fully unobstructed when standard seating is in use. For shows using alternative seating, more information will be listed on the ticketing page. The lower level of the Underground Theater, both seating and performance space, is only accessible via stairs. The Garden is located on Willet Street (between Grand and Broome Streets) and there is street-level gate entry. Visitors will need assistance from patrons’ services at the front desk for access. Read more about accessibility at Abrons Arts Center