Maria Hupfield: The Endless Return of Fabulous Panther (Biimskojiwan)

In February 2025, the Wexner Center for the Arts presents an exhibition dedicated to the work of Toronto-based artist Maria Hupfield, an active member of the Anishinaabek Nation from Wasauksing First Nation (Robinson Huron Treaty), Ontario. Developing from her commission for the 2024 Toronto Biennial of Art, The Supernatural Powers of Fabulous Panther (Biimskojiwan), she creates for the Wex an environment that focuses on the possibilities of sculptural materials, exploring how live performances resonate with multiple versions of the present.
 
Maria Hupfield’s immersive installations move through sculpture, performance, and video to challenge assumptions that spiral around objects. Her exhibitions are experimental sites where perceptions are tested, shared, and questioned. For Hupfield, artworks are always commas and never full stops: they are never fixed and always in conversation with the time and place that surround them.
 
The Endless Return of Fabulous Panther (Biimskojiwan) is a living sculpture, engaging with living peoples, site, space, ideas, and materials. It is crafted from industrial felt adorned with silver jingle bells and tin cone jingles. Felt is a primary material for Hupfield. Through use, she exposes its tactile and sound-dampening qualities, unraveling its material associations with the Western art-historical canon, returning to its practical utility. The exhibition will also include new performances and documentation of past performances.
 
The gallery spaces will become a sensory exploration of water and place. Whirlpools (biimskojiwan in the Anishinaabe language) anticipate the appearance of Fabulous Panther (miszhibizhiw)—in Anishinaabe oral traditions (aadizookaang) the most powerful underwater being known. In a challenge to colonial conventions for displaying art, Hupfield’s powerful work creates as a site for active bodies that hold, support, and cushion art with generous care.