Gurgle, Burble, Babble

July 23, 2022 2:00PM-3:00PM

Event Information:
Water has so much to teach us all we have to do is ask: Mary Siisip Geniusz asks the same question of plants in her book on Anishinaabe botanical teachings. Working from this premise, performance artists Maria Hupfield and Chris Mendoza came together to consider the relationship between water and the body through movement, text, and voice. The performance was an expression fueled by a series of discussions and readings on water they have undertaken together while walking alongside and in the lower river over the last year.

This ongoing, shared collaborative work and research brought together Mendoza’s onsite inquiries into the history of the Don Valley River, research begun for the exhibition yet you dream in the green of your time (2020), Art Museum UofT; with Hupfield’s transdisciplinary practice as a local collaborator with Mare Liberum, in which We Draw A Peoples Map of the Don Valley River (2020-22), artists in residents, Evergreen Brickworks; and the inaugural ArtworxTO Legacy Artist in Residence (AiR) Program, City of Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation.

Event Response by Emily DiCarlo

Event Response by Vanessa Dion Fletcher


All images courtesy of Brendan George Ko


chris mendoza is an artist and educator whose work moves between performance, sculpture, image-based work, and writing as affective inquiries into belonging, inheritance, and embodied relations to place. chris values presenting work and performing both in and outside of formal art spaces—the former of which include the FOFA gallery (Montreal); University of Toronto Art Museum; Craft Ontario; Crutch Gallery (Toronto); and the Icelandic Textile Center (Blönduós). chris holds a BFA from Concordia University, a Master of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto and currently resides in Tkaronto/Toronto.

Maria Hupfield (she/her) is an artist and transdisciplinary maker working with Industrial felt at the intersection of performance art, design and sculpture. She is an Assistant Professor, Indigenous Performance and Digital Arts; Canadian Research Chair, Transdisciplinary Indigenous Arts; Director / Lead Artist, Indigenous Creation Studio; and teaches in the Department of Visual Studies / English and Drama, University of Toronto Mississauga, and the Master of Visual Studies, Daniels UofT. She is the Inaugural ArtworxTO Artist in Residency with the City of Toronto, Parks and Recreation, as well a Mellon Fellow, Center for the Imagination in the Borderlands, Arizona State University, USA, 2022. Hupfield is martin clan and a member of the Anishinaabe Nation belonging to Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario, Canada.