image caption: Ken Lum, 117 Dwight Eisenhower Blvd, 2009. Plexiglas, enamel paint, powder-coated aluminum, 97 x 82 x 2”. Courtesy the artist & Royale Projects, Los Angeles.

Exhibition Opening Week Schedule and Events:

Artist Talk with Shannon Bool
Tuesday, September 25, 2018 | 7pm

Sameer Farooq, Jeanne Randolph & Jared Stanley in conversation
Thursday, September 28, 2018 | 7pm

Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is eager to announce the opening of our fall exhibition, Days of Reading: beyond this state of affairs. Structured around general notions of indexing, collecting, cloaking and the reveal with a focus on material and an overlay of poetry – the exhibition is grounded in the use of text, often found, poetic, and colloquial, with historical and political narratives interwoven as material, including the popular Black cultural magazine Jet in Theaster Gates’s work Do I Know You, 2017; the Haitian Declaration of Independence in Liberté ou la morte by Fabiola Carranza; strip mall signage in Ken Lum’s 117 Dwight Eisenhower Blvd, 2009; and in recently uncovered medieval graffiti in All Saints Bench, 2018 by Shannon Bool.

Natalie Czech, Hassan Khan, and Sylvia Matas present language using banal everyday signifiers: magazine print ads, LED signage, or newspaper clippings, which they parse into poetic and political gestures. Jeanne Randolph, and Sameer Farooq and Jared Stanley activate collections through ficto-criticism (Randolph) and speculative museums (Farooq and Stanley), and Leah Decter, like Carranza, excavates language from the archive of her maternal grandfather's ship's manifest coming in to Canada in her woven work, (through)line(age) 1779-1925-2013, 2013. As part of the exhibition Raven Chacon begins a new book project in dedication to the life of Zitkála-Šá, an early 20th century Yankton Dakota woman that will be comprised of twelve musical scores dedicated to twelve contemporary Indigenous women “working in the field of contemporary music performance or composition.”

The exhibition is to be read as one moves through it. Through a paring of objects and texts, how histories are captured and presented surface in prosaic terms, but carry the weight of history’s missteps and misrepresentations.

Please join us Saturday, September 29th for our opening reception programmed alongside an exciting schedule of events including a discussion between Raven Chacon, Suzanne Kite, and Laura Ortman at 6pm, followed by performances by Kite and Ortman at 8pm.

We would like to acknowledge Video Pool Media Arts Centre as co-producers of For Zitkála-Šá by Raven Chacon, which is a work in progress.

Associated Programming

Tuesday, September 25, 7pm | Artist Talk with Shannon Bool

Thursday, September 28, 7pm | Sameer Farooq, Jeanne Randolph and Jared Stanley in conversation

Saturday, September 29 | Nuit Blanche, Exhibition open 7pm to 1am

• 7-11pm | Opening Reception 


• 6pm | Panel Discussion with Raven Chacon, Laura Ortman and Suzanne Kite (in partnership with Video Pool Media Centre)

• 8pm | Performances by Laura Ortman and Suzanne Kite

Thursday, November 1, 7pm | Artist Talk Ken Lum
Hosted by the Winnipeg Art Gallery in Eckhardt Hall, 300 Memorial Boulevard, Winnipeg, and presented by the School of Art, University of Manitoba & Plug In Institute of Contemporary

Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art recognizes we are on Treaty One Territory, the traditional territories of the Anishinaabe, Métis, Cree, Dakota and Oji-Cree Nations.

Plug In ICA extends our gratitude to all the artists who are participating in Days of Reading: beyond this state of affairs, with with special acknowledgement to Daniel Faria Gallery for production assistance. We’d like to acknowledge Video Pool Media Arts Centre for their support of Raven Chacon’s work, and thank the Winnipeg Art Gallery and 1C03 Gallery for the loan of works from their collections in support of Jeanne Randolph’s work. We give special thanks to Mike Nesbitt for loaning us work from his private collection, and acknowledge with appreciation the School of Art at the University of Manitoba and the Winnipeg Art Gallery for collaborating to bring Ken Lum to Winnipeg for a lecture and seminar.

In general and as always, we thank the artists we work with, our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers. With special thanks to our Director’s Circle. You make a difference!

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We could not operate without their continued financial investment and lobbying efforts.

Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all. Enable us to continue presenting excellent programs! Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/support or by contacting Angela Forget, Operations Coordinator: angela@plugin.org.