The Muhheakantuck in Focus, Glyndor Gallery, Wavehill

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The Muhheakantuck in Focus, Glyndor Gallery, Wavehill. 

http://www.wavehill.org/arts/the_muhheakantuck_in_focus.html

1.Nation as a River: Glub, Glub, Glub goes the fish, with Red Water Panther, 30x40"

2.Eagle Dance: The Residual Effect, with Red Thunderer, 30x40"

3.Installation Wavehill

Muhheakantuck, a Lenape word meaning “the river that flows both ways,” was the original name for the estuary that now commemorates Henry Hudson. The river has provided both a connective route for indigenous people and a conduit for launching European trade and expansion beyond the region, ultimately impacting the entire continent. This exhibition brings together contemporary artists from Mexico, the United States and Canada, to explore the significance of the waterway to indigenous peoples before and after Hudson’s arrival. The new works in the gallery and on the grounds reveal common threads, exploring language, concepts of nationhood, stewardship and, in a recurring motif, the merging of indigenous and European art practices and experience.

Wave Hill expresses sincere gratitude to each artist for turning attention to the river and creating new work that is insightful and provocative. 

Maria Hupfield circled back to the original name of the river, Muhheakantuck, to create these ink drawings. She researched maps and other abstractions of history to delve into the assumptions made about a place. She notes that the fact that the river flowing both ways shares similarities with aboriginal ideas of governance. Her multi-layered use of powerful Anishnaabe origin figures that double as symbols of power in Western governments, invites different interpretations. In the Nation as a River, on the left, the parallel movement suggests the river flowing both ways, with the canoes in one direction and the imperial lion (or underwater panther) in the other. The image is open to interpretation of the flow of the river and the Two Row Treaty between the Dutch and the Haudenosaunee in 1613. The Eagle Dance bears a relation to emblematic representations of the United States, yet is also a powerful Anishnaabe sky world figure. By drawing a red line across each frame, the artist asserts her hand, and reminds us of the symbolic nature of the drawing.