Plug In ICA

Public Reading with Chris Kraus
2017-06-21 19:00 - 20:30 UTC
With abundant enthusiasm Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art presents a public reading with the unparalleled writer, publisher, editor and artist, Chris Kraus. Her proliﬁc and accumulated work has had a lasting inﬂuence on how art is perceived and discussed.
This public reading is programmed in conjunction the first session of our 2017 Summer Institute for which Kraus is the lead faculty. For her presentation, Kraus will read from After Kathy Acker: A Literary Biography. Kraus previously presented from this text at Plug In ICA in 2015 when it was still a work-in-progress, and now offers a privileged preview of the writing in its final stages, before it becomes available to the public on August 25th, 2017.
As novelist and critic, Kraus is recognized for her lucid, playful and provoking ﬁrst-person ﬁction narratives, which frequently blur theory, ﬁction, autobiography, and criticism. In her writing on contemporary art, she has explored boredom, poetry, privatized prisons, community art, corporate philanthropy, vertically integrated manufacturing, and discarded utopias, revealing the surprising persistence of micro-cultures.
Chris Kraus’ publications, praised for their intelligence, vulnerability and voracity, include: I Love Dick, Torpor, Aliens and Anorexia, Summer of Hate, Where Art Belongs, Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness, and Kelly Lake Store. Her monograph, “Lost Properties,” was written as part of Semiotexte’s pamphlet series for the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Kraus is the co-director of the acclaimed press Semiotext(e), where in 1990 she launched the imprint Native Agents, which introduced radical forms of writing by women writers. Native Agents has published the work of inﬂuential writers such as Penny Arcade, Fanny Howe, Ann Rower and Eileen Myles. She teaches in the Media Studies program at the European Graduate School.

All public programming is free and open to the public. Everyone welcome!

This is programed in relation to the Summer Institute, an international post-graduate research program for professional artists working in all disciplines and media. In 2017 Plug In ICA hosts two sessions of the Institute, both emphasizing writing as an expanded field incorporating elements of critical confession, reflection and artistry. For the first session, June 13-June 29, 2017, participants will work with renowned writer, artist and editor, Chris Kraus with guests Natasha Stagg and Robert Dewhurst.
The participants in the Summer Institute, Session I include:
Kristina Banera • Fabiola Carranza • Maegan Hill-Carroll • Daniel Colussi • Roewan Crowe • Erica Eryes • Esmé Hogeveen • Letch Kinloch• Soyoung Kwon • Chloë Lum • Kegan McFadden • Ralph Pritchard • Jasmine Reimer • Jacquelyn Ross • Faith Wilson.
For More information on Chris Kraus and the Summer Institute, Session I, see: https://plugin.org/node/1248

Plug In ICA extends our gratitude to our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers. With special thanks to our Director’s Circle.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, as well as Payworks and Wawanesa Insurance for the direct support of our youth programs.
Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/support or by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org
For media inquiries please contact: Sarah Nesbitt at sarah@plugin.org or by phone at (204) 942-1043. For general information please contact: info@plugin.org

Screening of Green Fog, 2017 | Directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson
2017-06-20 19:00 - 21:30
On Tuesday, June 20th, 2017 Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to present a special screening of Green Fog, directed by Winnipeg cult favorite, Guy Maddin in collaboration with directors Even Johnson and Galen Johnson.
Green Fog, 2017is an adaptation/remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO, created entirely from previously shot footage repurposed from 96 Hollywood studio films shot on location in San Francisco over the last century. The film was commissioned from the San Francisco International Film Festival for its 60th anniversary and premiered in San Francisco on April 16th of this year. The presentation at Plug In ICA marks the films third screening internationally.
This special screening is programmed in conjunction with session one of our Summer Institute research program lead by Chris Kraus. The directors will be present at the screening and available for a question and answer period.

All public programming is free and open to the public. Everyone welcome!

The Summer Institute is an international post-graduate research program for professional artists working in all disciplines and media. In 2017 Plug In ICA hosts two sessions of the Institute, both emphasizing writing as an expanded field incorporating elements of critical confession, reflection and artistry. For the first session, June 13-June 29, 2017, participants will work with renowned writer, artist and editor, Chris Kraus with guests Natasha Stagg and Robert Dewhurst.
Each session invites participants who wish to work independently or collaboratively based on their own interests and projects and includes opportunities to work in a peer-to-peer environment through group activities planned during the session. A number of guest artists, curators and theorists will visit the Summer Institute for lectures and studio visits.
The participants in the Summer Institute, Session I include:
Kristina Banera • Fabiola Carranza • Maegan Hill-Carroll • Daniel Colussi • Roewan Crowe • Erica Eryes • Esmé Hogeveen • Letch Kinloch• Soyoung Kwon • Chloë Lum • Kegan McFadden • Ralph Pritchard • Jasmine Reimer • Jacquelyn Ross • Faith Wilson.
For More information on Chris Kraus and the Summer Institute, Session I, see: https://plugin.org/node/1248

Plug In ICA extends our gratitude to our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers. With special thanks to our Director’s Circle.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, as well as Payworks and Wawanesa Insurance for the direct support of our youth programs.
Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/support or by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org

For media inquiries please contact: Sarah Nesbitt at sarah@plugin.org or by phone at (204) 942-1043. For general information please contact: info@plugin.org

Public Reading with LA-based Authors Natasha Stagg and Robert Dewhurst
2017-06-16 19:00 - 20:30
With great enthusiasm Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is honoured to host the inimitable writer, critic and publisher Chris Kraus as principal faculty for Session I of our 2017 Summer Institute research program (June 13-29). For the inaugural public program, on Friday, June 16, Kraus has invited two Los Angeles-based writers Natasha Stagg and Robert Dewhurst to give readings of their recent writing.
For this presentation Stagg will orate a passage from her inaugural novel, Surveys. Published in 2016 by Semiotext(e), Surveys is a wry first-person account of twenty-three-year-old Colleen’s sudden rise to fame in the era of social media set in the context of urban Los Angeles.
Following Stagg, Dewhurst will present a selection of his unpublished, and currently untitled critical biography of John Wieners (1934–2002), poète maudit of the Black Mountain and Beat generation.
Natasha Stagg was the editor for V Magazine and has most notably publishedSurveys a novel with Semiotext(e) in March of 2016. She has written for Texte Zur Kunst, Dis Magazine and Kaleidoscope. She received her MFA from the University of Arizona.
Robert Dewhurst is currently based in Los Angles, having received his PhD from SUNY Buffalo in English. He is a poet and the publisher of the chapbook imprint Scary Topiary Press and was the publisher of Wild Orchids Journal.

All public programming is free and open to the public. Everyone welcome!

The Summer Institute is an international post-graduate research program for professional artists working in all disciplines and media. In 2017 Plug In ICA hosts two sessions of the Institute, both emphasizing writing as an expanded field incorporating elements of critical confession, reflection and artistry. For the first session, June 13-June 29, 2017, participants will work with renowned writer, artist and editor, Chris Kraus with guests Natasha Stagg and Robert Dewhurst.
Each session invites participants who wish to work independently or collaboratively based on their own interests and projects and includes opportunities to work in a peer-to-peer environment through group activities planned during the session. A number of guest artists, curators and theorists will visit the Summer Institute for lectures and studio visits.
The participants in the Summer Institute, Session I include:
Kristina Banera • Fabiola Carranza • Maegan Hill-Carroll • Daniel Colussi • Roewan Crowe • Erica Eryes • Esmé Hogeveen • Letch Kinloch• Soyoung Kwon • Chloë Lum • Kegan McFadden • Ralph Pritchard • Jasmine Reimer • Jacquelyn Ross • Faith Wilson.
For More information on Chris Kraus and the Summer Institute, Session I, see: https://plugin.org/node/1248

Plug In ICA extends our gratitude to our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers. With special thanks to our Director’s Circle.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, as well as Payworks and Wawanesa Insurance for the direct support of our youth programs.
Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/supportor by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org
For media inquiries please contact: Sarah Nesbitt at sarah@plugin.org or by phone at (204) 942-1043. For general information please contact: info@plugin.org

Summer Institute I: Chris Kraus
2017-06-13 10:00 - 2017-06-29 17:00
For this session of Summer Institute, Kraus will lead a group of participants in a conversation grounded in writing that will range from everyone’s ongoing work to the city of Winnipeg. Activities will likely include the production of a short video, a dance/movement class, city walks and guest screenings and lectures.
As a gathering of relative strangers, the participants will produce individual work influenced by each other’s proximity. The workshop is open to visual artists of all kinds as well as writers, critics and scholars.

Faculty
Writers Natasha Stagg and Robert Dewhurst will join the session. Natasha Stagg was the editor for V Magazine and has most notably published Surveysa novel with Semiotext(e) in March of 2016. She has written for Texte Zur Kunst, Dis Magazine and Kaleidoscope. She received her MFA from the University of Arizona. Robert Dewhurst is currently based in Los Angles, having received his PHd from SUNY Buffalo in English. He is a poet and the publisher of the chapbook imprint Scary Topiary Press and was the publisher of Wild Orchids Journal.
Chris Kraus’ publications, praised for their intelligence, vulnerability and voracity, include: I Love Dick, Torpor, Aliens and Anorexia, Summer of Hate, Where Art Belongs, Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness, and Kelly Lake Store. Her monograph, “Lost Properties,” was written as part of Semiotexte’s pamphlet series for the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Kraus is the co-director of the acclaimed press Semiotext(e), where in 1990 she launched the imprint Native Agents, which introduced radical forms of writing by women writers. Native Agents has published the work of inﬂuential writers such as Penny Arcade, Fanny Howe, Ann Rower and Eileen Myles. She teaches in the Media Studies program at the European Graduate School.

Participants
Kristina Banera is an emerging interdisciplinary artist from Lockport, Manitoba now living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her work often integrates sculpture and digital media to explore psychology of space, the home, and the interrelations that constitute it. She received her Bachelor of Fine Art honours degree at the University of Manitoba, with a concentration in studio art. Banera has been exhibited nationally in galleries, artist run centres and alternative spaces. Most recently she participated in I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone (2015) // Anticipating Distance (2015), a curatorial exchange project based on correspondence between two groups of artists in Vancouver and Winnipeg. In Anticipating Distance at Avenue Gallery in Vancouver, BC, Banera presented the work Where do we go from here? (2015) in which a video takes the viewer through a virtual landscape, while probing dialogue plays through headphones. Banera has been featured in group shows including: Exposition (Platform Centre for Photographic + Digital Ats, Winnipeg), NO VACANCY (One Night Stand/Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge), JUNKHAUS 1: Sublime Consumer Minimalists (Junkhaus) (Media Hub, Winnipeg), BACKYARD (C Space, Winnipeg).
Fabiola Carranza
b.1983) is a Costa Rican/Canadian visual artist living in Southern California. Carranza holds a MFA from University of British Columbia and a BFA from Emily Carr University. Noteworthy solo exhibitions include: Aedes Hallucinates in the Jungle (Malaspina Printmakers, Vancouver, 2016) and El hábito de estrofas (Despacio, San José, 2011). Carranza has participated in group exhibitions at The National Gallery of Costa Rica, 221A, Contemporary Art Gallery, Artspeak Gallery and Access Gallery in Vancouver. Her first public art commission, Seven Signs, was on view at Waterfront Park in Seattle last summer.
Megan Hill-Carroll is an artist living and working in Vancouver, Canada. She holds an MFA from the University of California Los Angeles and a BFA from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, where she grew up building houses. She was the 2010 Barbara Spohr Memorial Award winner. Her work has been exhibited in Los Angeles and across Canada and appeared in the latest issue of the photographic publication Capricious. She has given talks in Detroit and Birmingham, Alabama. Her writing has been published in the contemporary art magazine Fillip. She is represented by Wil Aballe Art Projects in Vancouver where her solo exhibition MunimentMonument was mounted in the summer of 2015. Her second solo exhibition Green Puce was recently on view in Winnipeg at the Platform Centre for Digital and Photographic Art; Jan. 7 through Feb.18, 2017.
Daniel Colussi is a writer/musician from the West Coast relocated to the geographic centre of North America. His writing is focused on contemporary music and musicians. His music ploughs the fields that lay at the negative end of the emotional spectrum. Daniel completes his M.A. in cultural studies from the University of Winnipeg in summer 2017.
Roewan Crow
Multidisciplinary artist and writer Roewan Crowe is energized by acts of disruption, radical transformation and the tactical deployment of self-reflexivity. Born under the big skies of Saskatchewan and raised in scofflaw Alberta, Crowe left the prairies to deepen her engagements with art and feminism, and to do graduate studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. A return to the prairies inspired art and writing centered on queer feminist reclamation practices. Crowe’s paid gig: Associate Professor and Chair in the department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Winnipeg.
Erica Eryes
Originally from Winnipeg, Erica Eyres lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland. She holds an MFA from Glasgow School of Art. Through videos, drawings and sculptures, she explores narrative fallacies that complicate the viewer’s understanding of the author’s subjective truth, and problematizes the notion of the autobiographical. Frequently borrowing from the aesthetics of low-budget television, her videos centre around personal narratives and her own performance in her videos is revealed through a disembodied voice or pair of hands. This detached approach to performance is reflected in her recent series Conference Drawings (2016) and Life Drawings (2016).
Esmé Hogeveen is a reader, writer, and editor based in Toronto. In fall 2017, she will be a PhD candidate at York University’s Art History and Visual Culture program focusing on issues of judgment and phenomenological intuition relative to gendered (female) visuality and studying with Jennifer Fischer, Allyson Mitchell, and Dan Adler. She holds an MA in Critical Theory andCreative Research from the Hallie Ford Graduate School at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (Portland, OR), where she received a Merit Scholarship and the Best Research Thesis Award. She also holds a BA in English and Contemporary Studies from the University of King’s College (Halifax, NS) and recently participated in the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY) and the Gonzago Institute at the Khyber Centre for the Arts (Halifax,NS). She is a past recipient of two SSHRC CGS Master’s Scholarship offers. In 2016, Esmé was an Editorial Intern at C Magazine, for whom she has gone on to regularly write, including a recent feature interview with Lucca Fraser, “Feminisms of the Future, Now: Rethinking Technofeminism and the Manifesto Form,” for the Winter 2017 FORCE issue of C dedicated to contemporary feminisms. Esmé has also written for GUTS: Canadian Feminist Magazine, CRIT, PUBLIC, and Franz Kaka Gallery, and is a Collective Member at M,I,C,E. Magazine. She has done two residencies at the Caldera Arts Center (Sisters, OR) and her public reading series Default Design and Designation, conducted as part of the Robotics Residency and Exhibition at the Khyber Centre for the Arts (Halifax, NS), was named a Canadian Art “Must See.” Esmé’s writing practice frequently involves collaborations with artists and thinkers from diverse disciplines, with resulting projects with Hannah Levin McGraw, Luke Mohan, Matthew Green, and Sophie Kujiper Dickson. She is also a co-founder of the interdisciplinary research platform Reading With ______, which featured a public reading series on lyric metaphor in Toronto during 2016 and is currently developing its 2017 program.
Letch Kinloch is a Winnipeg-based writer, artist, and arts administrator whose work looks at metaphors of body, disease, and death as a way of thinking through societal ritual and expectation, and “the way things have always been done”. Letch is the founder of Also As Well Too Artist Book Library, a free and accessible space that celebrates, expands ideas around, and gives opportunities to people working with the artist book genre.
Soyoung Kwon is currently enrolled as PhD student at the European Graduate School, in the Philosophy, Art and Critical Thought program. Her research focuses on multi-cultural subjectivity through the lens of psychoanalysis and feminism. She has a Masters in Art, Culture, and Technology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Informed by her identity as a Korean female immigrant, her thesis, miss translation: from fact to feeling to form, documented themes of migration, memory, monument, and image as experienced by Kwon during her time at MIT. She is currently enrolled in an acting workshop based on the Sanford Meisner and Michael Chekhov technique that emphasizes, “the reality of doing” and the psychological gesture.
During the Plug In workshop Kwon will begin work on her new project, The Retirement House for the Roomba. Considering the functional degradation of our machines over time (“smart” electronics being only a recent iteration), Kwon questions what kind of life can be had by these inventions after they’ve passed their prime. Then she asks, “What kind of planned housing does the planned obsolete deserve?”
Chloë Lum & Yannick Desranleau have participated in many group exhibitions throughout Canada, the United-States, and in Europe, including the University of Texas, Austin (2015); the Center for Books and Paper Arts, Columbia College, Chicago (2015); the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2011); the Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2010); the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England (2009); and at Whitechapel Project Space, London (2007). Their recent solo exhibitions include Khiele Gallery, St. Cloud State University, Minnesota (2016); the Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown (2014); YYZ Artists’ Outlet, Toronto(2013); and Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto (2012). Their performances have been presented at the Darling Foundry (2015), and as part of the OFFTA festival (2016). Lum and Desranleau are also known on the international music scene as co-founders of the avant-rock group AIDS Wolf, for whom they also produced award-winning concert posters under the name Séripop.
Kegan McFadden As a writer, curator, and artist, Kegan McFadden’s projects blur the line between cultural research and storytelling. McFadden has organized exhibitions for artist-run, university, and public galleries throughout Canada over the last decade, employing a curatorial method that is purposely subjective, in order to reposition received narratives and highlight alternative approaches to discourse. McFadden’s projects, which take the shape of publications, exhibitions, performances, and artworks, embody a theory of thinking through history. He animates his archival research with an emphasis on the anecdotal, and is particularly interested in locating networks of activity that have gone unacknowledged.
Ralph Pritchard is a moving image artist making work about desire, power and boundaries. They are currently writing a dystopian short film about emotional labour and technology. Ralph’s previous experience includes commissioning video content about politics and culture for Novara Media, curating screenings and group shows in London and co-directing a feature-length experimental film. Ralph co-hosts the podcast Gone Clear and is currently a member of the School of the Damned, an alternative fine art MA organised by and for its students.
Jasmine Reimer received a BFA from Emily Carr University in Vancouver in 2009 and a MFA from The University of Guelph in 2015. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Coherent Disorder and Confused Arousal’ at Georgia Scherman Projects, ‘Two Kinds of Anything’ at G Gallery Projects and ‘the harder softer side’ at The Dunlop Art Gallery. She is the recipient of many awards and grants including Canada Council for the Arts Project Grant, Ontario Arts Council Project Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Award, The Vancouver Foundation Emerging Artist Grant and the Canadian Millennium Achievement Award. Her work has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions internationally and included in private collections across Canada. In February 2017, she hosted a solo exhibition of new sculptures and released her first book of poetry both titled, Small Obstructions.
Jacquelyn Ross
is a writer and critic based in Toronto. Her writing has appeared in BOMB, Mousse, C Magazine, The Capilano Review, artforum.com, and elsewhere, and her recent chapbooks include Mayonnaise and Drawings on Yellow Paper. She publishes books by emerging artists and writers under the small press Blank Cheque, and is currently at work on a collection of stories.
Faith Wilson is an artist and writer from Hamilton, Aotearoa (New Zealand), currently residing in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington), Aotearoa. She is of both Samoan and Pakeha (New Zealand European) descent, and is part of the third generation of Pacific Island immigrants, growing up only in Aotearoa with minimal connection to Samoa. Completing a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Philosophy at the University of Canterbury and the University of Waikato, she then completed her Honours in English Literature at the University of Victoria and was then accepted into the
International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria where she completed a Master of Arts in Creative Writing focusing on Poetry. She has been published in many literary publications in New Zealand. Growing up within the contemporary art world, she shunned it for many years, but then found it to have an urgency of expression she found the Aotearoa literary scene lacked. She began performing with her mother in a series of performances at Offstage, Common Ground and Enjoy Art
Gallery, and then began performing solo, incorporating video and text-based installation into her practice. She exhibited in New Perspectives, an exhibition co-curated by Simon Denny at Artspace, 2016 and is often involved in collaborative text-based artwork with Fresh n Fruity Gallery online. From then, she has had solo shows OLGA, Window Online, and Blue Oyster Artspace, and curated an exhibition Dark Objects at the Dowse Art Museum, Wellington in March 2017.
Faith Wilson is an artist and writer from Hamilton, Aotearoa (New Zealand), currently residing in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington), Aotearoa. She is of both Samoan and Pakeha (New Zealand European) descent, and is part of the third generation of Pacific Island immigrants, growing up only in Aotearoa with minimal connection to Samoa. Completing a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Philosophy at the University of Canterbury and the University of Waikato, she then completed her Honours in English Literature at the University of Victoria and was then accepted into the
International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria where she completed a Master of Arts in Creative Writing focusing on Poetry. She has been published in many literary publications in New Zealand. Growing up within the contemporary art world, she shunned it for many years, but then found it to have an urgency of expression she found the Aotearoa literary scene lacked. She began performing with her mother in a series of performances at Offstage, Common Ground and Enjoy Art
Gallery, and then began performing solo, incorporating video and text-based installation into her practice. She exhibited in New Perspectives, an exhibition co-curated by Simon Denny at Artspace, 2016 and is often involved in collaborative text-based artwork with Fresh n Fruity Gallery online. From then, she has had solo shows OLGA, Window Online, and Blue Oyster Artspace, and curated an exhibition Dark Objects at the Dowse Art Museum, Wellington in March 2017.

Spring Exhibition Closing Party and Performance
2017-06-03 20:00 - 2017-06-04 00:00
Doors & Cash Bar | 8pm
Grottoesque | 10pm
Crabskul (DJ Set) | 11pm
On Saturday, June 3, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art will be celebrating the coming of summer and the end of our spring exhibitions with a closing party and performance. Doors and cash bar open at 8pm and at 10pm, Grottoesque – a “suite of Doo-wave cave ballads & staged banter”- will be presented by the performative musical duo Pastoralia (Ray Fenwick and Mitchell Wiebe) in the newly deconstructed space of Fenwick’s exhibition A Greenhouse. Evening.
Festivities continue into the evening with a DJ Set by Crabskull, and a first-come-first-serve plant sale with the “recently exhibited, sonically nurtured” plants from Ray Fenwick’s A Greenhouse. Evening. Also available for purchase – a special limited edition sweater, Step Mother Tongue and tote bag, External Packaging both produced specifically for the exhibition currently on view at Plug in ICA Titig Kayumanggi (Brown Gaze) by Patrick Cruz.
Everyone welcome!

Stages Speaker Series: Artist Talk with Federico Herrero
2017-06-01 19:00 - 21:00
*Off-site Location- 393 Portage Ave, former Globe Cinema, 3rd floor, Portage Place Shopping Centre
Plug In ICA is pleased to present a talk by Costa Rican artist Federico Herrero, who is the 7th speaker as part of our 2017 Stages Speaker Series. This series is held off-site currently at the former Globe Cinema in Portage Place Mall, Winnipeg.
Federico Herrero’s work uses landscape and the urban environment both as the subject of his paintings and as the surface for his work. Incorporating shape, colour, pattern and graphic lines, his paintings often move beyond the canvas onto floors, walls, into the city-scape and on to architectural structures. Within an often limited palette with a pale blue often featured prominiently, Herrero embraces an intuitive approach to his work, leaving room to respond to the spaces his paintings inhabit.
Federico Herrero has had numerous solo exhibitions. Language Melody is currently presented at Sies + Hoke, Dusseldorf where he is exhibiting a new body of work, for which the gallery is publishing a 300 page monograph including an essay by Chris Sharp and an interview with Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy. He most recently exhibited as part of United States of Latin America at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit curated by Jen Hoffman and Pablo Leon de la Barra. He has participated in numerous international exhibitions including the Venice Biennale where he received a special prize for Young Artists in 2001. Since then he has shown to much acclaim at the Havana Biennial (2003); the Aichi World Expo, Nagoya, Japan (2005); Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami (2008); Museum of Latin American Art, Los Angeles (2012); and Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain (2013). Herrero lives and works in San José.
This artist talk with Federico Herrero is part of Stages Speaker Series, which is offered in anticipation of Stages: Drawing the Curtain, a constellation of temporary public artworks to be launched in August 2017. This large-scale public art project asks artists to locate a site within the city of Winnipeg from which to contemplate the stage – its function as a platform; its meaning as a point of attention; and its physical design. Directed by their individual interests and material preferences, the artists will build sculptural ‘stages’ ranging in shape and form, connected as platforms for audiences to occupy, physically engage with and contemplate.
In keeping with the drive of Stages to bring art beyond our walls, all talks for Stages Speaker Series will be held at an off-site location. This presentation will be held at the former Globe Cinema, 3rd floor, Portage Place Shopping Centre, 393 Portage Ave, Winnipeg.
*Artists for Stages: Drawing the Curtain include: Abbas Akhavan (Toronto), Pablo Bronstein (London, UK), Toril Johannessen (Tromsø, Norway), Kara Hamilton (Toronto), Federico Herrero (San José, Costa Rica), Divya Mehra (Winnipeg), Krista Belle Stewart (Vancouver) and Ron Tran (Vancouver).
**a selection of the presentations from Stages Speaker Series are now online at https://plugin.org/videos

Stages Speaker Series and Stages: Drawing the Curtain are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts through its New Chapter Program.
Our community partners include Winnipeg Tourism, Alliance Française Manitoba, Urbanink, Cityplace Mall (Triovest), Portage Place Shopping Centre and Fillip, CKUW, Alt Hotel, and Alpha Masonry.

Related exhibit:
STAGES: Drawing the Curtain

Stages Speaker Series: Artist Talk with Abbas Akhavan
2017-05-29 19:00 - 21:00
Former Globe Cinema, 3rd floor, Portage Place Shopping Centre, 393 Portage Ave, Winnipeg
Plug In ICA is pleased to present an artist talk by Abbas Akhavan, who is the 6th speaker as part of our 2017 Stages Speaker Series.
Akhavan’s practice ranges from site-specific ephemeral installations to drawing, video, sculpture and performance. The direction of Akhavan’s research has been deeply influenced by the specificity of the sites where he works: the architectures that house them, the economies that surround them, and the people that frequent them. The domestic sphere, as a forked space between hospitality and hostility, has been an ongoing area of research in his practice. More recent works have shifted focus, wandering onto spaces and species just outside the home – the garden, the backyard, and other domesticated landscapes.
Abass Akhavan is the recipient of Kunstpreis Berlin (2012), TFVA finalist prize (2012), The Abraaj Group Art Prize (2014), the Sobey Art Award (2015), and the Fellbach Triennial Award (2016). His recent solo exhibitions include, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2017); SALT Galata, Istanbul (2017); David Roberts Art Foundation (DRAF), London (2017); FLORA, Bogota (2016); Mercer Union, Toronto (2015) and Delfina Foundation, London (2012). His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2016); Wellcome Collection, London (2016); Beirut Art Centre, Beirut, (2015); Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2014) and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2011).
This artist talk with Abbas Akhavan is part of Stages Speaker Series, which is offered in anticipation of Stages: Drawing the Curtain, a constellation of temporary public artworks to be launched in August 2017. This large-scale public art project asks artists to locate a site within the city of Winnipeg from which to contemplate the stage – its function as a platform; its meaning as a point of attention; and its physical design. Directed by their individual interests and material preferences, the artists will build sculptural ‘stages’ ranging in shape and form, connected as platforms for audiences to occupy, physically engage with and contemplate.
In keeping with the drive of Stages to bring art beyond our walls, all talks for Stages Speaker Series will be held at an off-site location. This presentation will be held at the former Globe Cinema, 3rd floor, Portage Place Shopping Centre, 393 Portage Ave, Winnipeg.
*Artists for Stages: Drawing the Curtain include: Abbas Akhavan (Toronto), Pablo Bronstein (London, UK), Toril Johannessen (Tromsø, Norway), Kara Hamilton (Toronto), Federico Herrero (San José, Costa Rica), Divya Mehra (Winnipeg), Krista Belle Stewart (Vancouver) and Ron Tran (Vancouver).
**Previous talks from Stages Speaker Series are now online at https://plugin.org/videos
Stages Speaker Series and Stages: Drawing the Curtain are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts through its New Chapter Program.
Our community partners include Winnipeg Tourism, Alliance Française Manitoba, Urbanink, Cityplace Mall (Triovest), Portage Place Shopping Centre, Fillip, CKUW, Alt Hotel, and Alpha Masonry.

Related exhibit:
STAGES: Drawing the Curtain

Rescheduled- Stages Speaker Series: Artist Talk with Divya Mehra
2017-05-03 19:00 - 21:00
Former Globe Cinema, 3rd floor, Portage Place Shopping Centre, 393 Portage Ave, Winnipeg
Due to unforeseen circumstances, Divya Mehra’s talk scheduled on Thursday, April 27th has been cancelled. We have rescheduled the talk for Wednesday, May 3rd at 7pm. We apologize for any inconvenience.
In continuation of our Stages Speaker Series, on Wednesday, May 3rd at 7pm, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art presents a performative talk by Winnipeg-based artist Divya Mehra at the Globe Cinema. She will present a series of short stories in lieu of speaking directly to her artwork.
Mehra’s work is an astute example of how art can destabilize our collective and individual perceptions about race and gender. She does this through pop cultural lines, manipulating common signs into pointed and at times barbed commentary that references the caution and insincerity of a forced political correctness. Mehra’s work carries a relevance that aims to be transformative, advancing a conversation surrounding identity. How our behaviors and responses contribute to a status quo that gives voice to diversity but remains steadfast in old hierarchies.
Working in sculpture, print, drawing, artist books, installation, advertising, and most recently film, Mehra is known for her meticulous attention to the interaction of form, medium and site that together produces an acerbic body of work, addressing the long-term effects of colonization and institutional racism. Re-contextualizing references found in hip-hop, literature, and current affairs, she contends with contemporary expressions of societies (India, America, Canada) continuously formed by their colonial roots.
Mehra’s solo exhibitions include It’s Gonna Rain, The New Gallery, Calgary; Pouring Water on a Drowning Man, Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto; You have to tell Them, i’m not a Racist, La Maison Des Artistes, Winnipeg; The Party is Over, Artspeak, Vancouver; and Turf War, Platform: center for photographic + digital arts, Winnipeg. Mehra’s work has been presented as part of exhibitions and commissions with MoMA PS1, Creative Time, and the Queens Museum of Art, New York; MASS MoCA, North Adams; Latitude 28, Delhi; and The Beijing 798 Biennale. Mehra holds an MFA from Columbia University and is represented in Toronto by Georgia Scherman Projects. She is currently based in Winnipeg. Divya Mehra (b. 1981) year of the Rooster.

This performative artist talk with Divya Mehra is part of Stages Speaker Series, featuring artists from Canada and the world. The series is offered in anticipation of Stages: Drawing the Curtain, a constellation of public artworks to be launched in August 2017. This large-scale public art project asks artists to locate a site within the city of Winnipeg from which to contemplate the stage – its function as a platform; its meaning as a point of attention; and its physical design. Directed by their individual interests and material preferences, the artists will build sculptural ‘stages’ ranging in shape and form, connected as platforms for audiences to occupy, physically engage with and contemplate.
In keeping with the drive of Stages to bring art beyond our walls, all talks for Stages Speaker Series will be held at an off-site location. This presentation will be held at the former Globe Cinema, 3rd floor, Portage Place Shopping Centre, 393 Portage Ave, Winnipeg.
*Artists for Stages: Drawing the Curtain include: Abbas Akhavan (Toronto), Pablo Bronstein (London, UK), FASTWÜRMS (Toronto), Toril Johannessen (Tromsø, Norway), Kara Hamilton (Toronto), Federico Herrero (San José, Costa Rica), Divya Mehra (Winnipeg), and Krista Belle Stewart (Vancouver).
**Previous talks from Stages Speaker Series are now online at https://plugin.org/videos
Stages Speaker Series and Stages: Drawing the Curtain are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts through its New Chapter Program.
Our community partners include Winnipeg Tourism, Alliance Française Manitoba, Urban Ink Design, Cityplace Mall (Triovest), Portage Place Shopping Centre, Alt Hotel, Alpha Masonry Ltd and Fillip Publishers.

Plug In ICA extends our heartfelt gratitude to our generous donors, valued members, and dedicated volunteers. We acknowledge the sustaining support of our Director’s Circle. You all make a difference.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, as well as Wawanesa Insurance for the direct support of our youth programs.
Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/support or by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org
For more information on this and our other education programs, contact Sarah Nesbitt at sarah@plugin.org. For general information please contact: info@plugin.org or call 1.204.942.1043

Related exhibit:
STAGES: Drawing the Curtain

Tournée guidée en français par Janelle Tougas des deux expositions de la programmation du printemps
2017-04-29 15:00 - 16:00
Le samedi 29 avril, Plug In ICA présente une tournée guidée en français par Janelle Tougas des deux expositions de la programmation du printemps. Pour ces deux expositions en solo, les deux artistes ont créé des environnements immersifs dans leurs galeries respectives du Plug in ICA – Titig Kayumanggi (Brown Gaze) par l’artiste philippin canadien Patrick Cruz, gagnant du 17e Concours annuel de peintures canadiennes de RBC en 2015, et “A Greenhouse. Evening.” par l’artiste bien-aimé Winnipégois Ray Fenwick.

Patrick Cruz

Titig Kayumanggi (Brown Gaze)

Du 14 avril au 04 juin 2017

Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art est fier de présenter Titig Kayumanggi (Brown Gaze), la première exposition en solo de Patrick Cruz à Winnipeg.

Pour cette exposition, des motifs animés sont peints sur les murs, le planché et la vitrine du Plug In ICA, enveloppant l’espace et ses visiteurs. Ce parcours personnel d’immigration des Philippines au Canada est une histoire tracée à la surface des toiles de Cruz, rendue visible par l’accumulation de lignes, de couleurs et de gestes, empilés et amassés dans une installation immersive. Titig Kayumanggi (Brown Gaze) présente le regard de l’artiste – sa perspective, fusionnée de façon stylisée dans un monde dense et saturé de lignes peintes, de couleurs vives, de collages vidéo et d’objets empilés.

Patrick Cruz est un artiste multidisciplinaire philippin canadien reconnu pour son style de peinture immersif, sa palette de couleurs vives, ses installations d’assemblages et ses lignes gestuelles. Influencé par son expérience de migration au Canada en 2005, Cruz cultive le détritus de la société capitaliste, l’implique en tant qu’acteur dans ses œuvres et y centre ses réflexions sur la mondialisation, le déplacement et la migration. En 2015, Cruz a gagné le 17e concours annuel de peintures canadiennes de RBC. Il a aussi exposé à travers l’Amérique du Nord, en Europe et en Asie avec des expositions récentes à Projet Pangee à Montréal, Centre A à Vancouver, Project 20 à Quezon City aux Philippines et Multiplex à Portland. Ses œuvres sont présentement exposées à la Art Gallery of Alberta et ont été présentées au Mexico Material Art Fair en 2016. En plus de sa pratique en solo, Cruz collabore souvent avec d’autres artistes pour présenter des performances et des projections vidéo. Ses œuvres sont collectionnées par la RBC, la banque TD, ainsi que par des collectionneurs privés à Manille, à Hongkong, à Vancouver, à Calgary, à Toronto, et en Floride.

Ray Fenwick

A Greenhouse. Evening

Du 14 avril au 4 juin 2017

Le titre de l’exposition, “A Greenhouse. Evening.” (Une serre. Soir.) est une description mettant en scène cette exposition solo de Fenwick qui est à la fois une installation élaborée et une performance improvisée.

La «serre» de Fenwick est une structure autonome, placée dans le «soir» – une pièce faiblement éclairée. Cette mise en scène accueille les visiteurs qui sont invités à entrer et à se mettre en contact avec les éléments de l’installation ainsi qu’avec la possibilité d’une conversation. Dans “A Greenhouse. Evening.” Fenwick aborde la définition d’une conversation en poussant ce sujet à une conclusion absurde où les murs parlent et où les plantes peuvent comprendre et pousser.

Ray Fenwick est un artiste interdisciplinaire qui œuvre en performance, en vidéo, en art sonore et en typographie. Connu pour ses performances excentriques, souvent immersives et à longue durée, il explore le langage, la voix et la communication. Ses œuvres de performances se situent à quelque part entre l’humour expérimental et l’art sonore. En plus de ses projets en solo, Fenwick collabore aussi avec l’artiste Mitchell Wiebe sous le nom de Pastoralia, un projet hybride d’art, de performance et de musique qui est le point de rencontre des pratiques artistiques des deux artistes.

Fenwick a complété sa maitrise en beaux-arts à l’Université du Manitoba et a exposé au Canada et aux États-Unis. Pastoralia a donné des prestations dans plusieurs salles inattendues telles que l’ouverture de l’exposition Oh Canada du Mass MoCA, à North Adams Massachusetts, au Nocturne festival d’Halifax et tout récemment au Saltbox performance festival à Terre-Neuve. Ses œuvres ont aussi été exposées à la Galerie Sans Nom à Moncton, à la Grenfell Art Gallery à Corner Brook, à la Southern Alberta Art Gallery à Lethbridge, à la Truck Gallery à Calgary, et au Plug-In ICA à Winnipeg. Cette exposition marque sa première exposition en solo à Winnipeg.

Expositions connexes :

Ray Fenwick: A Greenhouse. Evening.

Patrick Cruz: Titig Kayumanggi (Brown Gaze)

Related exhibits:
Ray Fenwick: A Greenhouse. Evening.
Patrick Cruz: Titig Kayumanggi (Brown Gaze)

Respondent Series Performance | Psychic Materials by Casey Mecija
2017-04-20 19:00 - 20:00
On Thursday, April 20, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art in collaboration with The Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies (U of W), and Queer People of Color (QPOC) presents Psychic Materials, a performance by scholar, musician and performance artist, Casey Mecija.
For her presentation at Plug In ICA, Mecija will draw on her background as a musician in the orchestral pop band Ohbijou and recent solo projects. She will perform amidst Patrick Cruz’s immersive installation Titig Kayumanggi (Brown Gaze) currently on exhibition at Plug In ICA. Mecija and Cruz are linked by a mutual concern with the diasporic experience of migration from the Philippines. Mecija’s performance is sonically informed by her recent solo album Psychic Materials and will use a mash up of video and GIF art, performance, and sound to meditate on “the queer dynamics of diaspora”.
Finding space within aesthetic practice to visualize what she refers to as “queer feelings, Filipina subjectivity and diasporic longing”, Psychic Materials puts forward two propositions: “What is the psychic life of music? What is the soundtrack to diasporic experience?”
Casey Mecija is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in music and film. From 2004 to 2014, Mecija was a writer and singer for the Canadian orchestral pop band, Ohbijou and in 2016 she released her first solo album, Psychic Materials. Mecija was awarded the WIFT-T Award (Women in Film and Television) at the 2013 Reel Asian Film Festival for her short film “My Father, Francis” which screened at Inside Out LGBT Film Festival, Toronto; Mixed Shorts: Local Heroes, Toronto; and the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival. In addition to her artistic pursuits, Mecija is actively involved in queer and Filipina organizing. She is currently completing a PhD at The University of Toronto, where she researches art, media and cultural studies as they relate to queer diaspora.
This artist talk is presented as part of Plug In ICA’s Respondent Series, which invites professionals from diverse fields to respond to the themes and subjects addressed in our exhibitions.

Plug In ICA extends our gratitude to our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers. With special thanks to our Director’s Circle.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, as well as Payworks and Wawanesa Insurance for the direct support of our youth programs.

Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/support or by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org
For general information please contact: info@plugin.org. For media inquiries please contact Sarah Nesbitt: sarah@plugin.org.

Related exhibit:
Patrick Cruz: Titig Kayumanggi (Brown Gaze)

Tagalog eksibisyon tour ni Patrick Cruz, 2pm | Artist Talk in English, 3pm
2017-04-15 14:00 - 16:00
Ihinahandog ng Plug In Institute of Contemporary art ang eksibisyong Titig Kayumanggi (Brown Gaze) ang unang solo eksibisyon ni Patrick Cruz sa Winnipeg, kilala sa estilo at pag gamit ng matitingkad na kulay, matatapang na linya sa pagguhit, at mga instalasyon na sumasakop ng espasyo gawa ng kanyang mga likhang-sining. Isang personal na kasaysayan ng imigrasyon mula sa Pilipinas papuntang Canada ay ang kwento na nakaguhit sa mga obra ni Patrick Cruz, sa pamamagitan ng akumulasyon ng linya, kulay at ibatibang estilo sa pagpinta, ito ay isinalansan at pinagsamasama sa isang nakaka-engganyong instalasyon. Nakapaskil sa pader at gumagapang sa sahig ng Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Titig Kayumanggi (Brown Gaze) ay ang pananaw ng artist – ang kanyang perspektibo na bumubuo ng isang magulo, maingay at masikip na mundo gawa sa mga ginuhit na linya, matitingkad na kulay, mga pinagtagpitagping mga bidyo at mga pinagpatongpatong na mga gamit.
Si Patrick Cruz ay isang Filipino-Canadian artist at organizer na nagtatrabaho sa pagitan ng Vancouver, Toronto at Manila, Philippines. Nagaral siya ng pagpinta sa University of the Philippines Diliman at eskulptura sa Emily Carr University of Art + Design sa Vancouver. Tinapos niya ang kanyang Masters of Fine arts sa University of Guelph etong nakaraang taon. Ang kanyang sining at mga obra ay dala ng kanyang karanasan bilang isang immigrante galing Pilipinas patungong Canada. Siya ay nanalo ng National Prize noong 2015 mula sa 17th annual RBC Canadian Painting Competition.

Related exhibit:
Patrick Cruz: Titig Kayumanggi (Brown Gaze)

Stages Speaker Series: Artist Talk with FASTWÜRMS
2017-04-11 19:00 - 20:00
*New Location- 393 Portage Ave, former Globe Cinema, 3rd floor, Portage Place Shopping Centre
On Tuesday, April 11th at 7pm, Plug In ICA presents an artist talk by Ontario-based collective FASTWÜRMS.
FASTWÜRMS artwork is characterized by a self-described “determined DIY sensibility, Witch Nation identity politics, and a keen allegiance towards working class, queer alliance, and artist collaborations”. They are mainstays within the Canadian art scene and have a long relationship of working with Plug In ICA, including on their 2008 exhibition Donky@Ninja@Witch.
Their Interdisciplinary practice takes on many forms including video, installation, performance and public art. Interweaving punk aesthetics with ancient symbol-ology their immersive installations act as stages for performance and audience interaction. They embrace the lexicon of popular culture witchcraft as a tool to look at issues of identity politics and social interaction.
For their talk, FASTWÜRMS will present their work as it relates to the upcoming public art project, STAGES: Drawing The Curtain – a constellation of site-specific public artworks to be launched through out Winnipeg in August 2017. This large-scale public art project asks artists to locate a site within the city of Winnipeg from which to contemplate the stage – its function as a platform; its meaning as a point of attention; and its physical design. Directed by their individual interests and material preferences, the artists will build sculptural ‘stages’ ranging in shape and form, connected as platforms for audiences to occupy, physically engage with, and contemplate.
Formed in 1979 by multidisciplinary artists Kim Kozzi and Dai Skuse, FASTWÜRMS is known for their diverse immersive practice that explores identity, humour, magic and social exchange. Their practice takes the form of public commissions, installation, video, performance, and drawing. Together they teach studio art at the University of Guelph, Ontario. Their work has been shown extensively in North America and Internationally at venues including the Power Plant (Toronto), Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Ontario Art Gallery (Toronto), CIAC (Montréal), Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff), SEQUENCES Festival (Reykjavik, Iceland), Seoul Museum of Art (Seoul, Korea) Leokonig Projekte (New York) and the 2006 São Paulo Biennial, Brazil. FASTWÜRMS is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto.

In keeping with the drive of Stages to bring art beyond our walls, all talks forStages Speaker Series will be held at an off-site location: 393 Portage Ave, former Globe Cinema, 3rd floor, Portage Place Shopping Centre
*Artists for Stages: Drawing the Curtain include: Abbas Akhavan (Toronto), Pablo Bronstein (London, UK),FASTWÜRMS (Toronto), Toril Johannessen (Tromsø, Norway), Kara Hamilton (Toronto), Frederico Herrero (San José, Costa Rica), Divya Mehra (Winnipeg), and Krista Belle Stewart (Vancouver).
Stages Speaker Series and Stages: Drawing the Curtain are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts through its New Chapter Program.
Our community partners include Winnipeg Tourism, Alliance Française Manitoba, Urban Ink Design, Portage Place Shopping Centre and Fillip Publishers.

Related exhibit:
STAGES: Drawing the Curtain

Bushed Theories: ReMatriation of Images and Performativity | Artist Talk by Jeneen Frei Njootli
2017-04-01 14:00 - 15:00
* Please note that due to unforseen circumstances, there has been a time change. The talk is now at 2pm instead of 3pm. Sorry for the inconvenience.*
This Saturday, April 1, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art presents an artist talk by Jeneen Frei Njootli. As an emerging interdisciplinary artist Frei Njootli is known for her performative sound pieces, sparse sculptural forms, community engagement and material sensitivity.
For this talk, she will introduce us to her practice and forthcoming project for LandMarks2017. She will speak to the consumption of the northern landscape, Indigenous bodies, and their labour in visual culture as an ongoing set of problematics and politics that her work engages with.
Frei Njootli is an interdisciplinary artist of the Vuntut Gwitchin self-governing Nation, whose home community is in Old Crow, Yukon. Her practice takes a critical approach to the materials she uses, which often reflect her investigations of the history of trade and intercultural exchange with a particular focus on “Bush Theory.” This term defines a way of navigating relationships to colonial power from a knowledge situated in the Arctic. Frei Njootli is co-creator of the ReMatriate Collective, a community located primarily on social media dedicated to Indigenous womxn’s self-determination. Her advocacy in this field is evident throughout her practice, unfolding in her work as a cultural tattoo practitioner and facilitator of skill sharing workshops.
Jeneen Frei Njootli received her BFA from Emily Carr University, and is currently pursuing her MFA on unceded Musqueam territory at the University of British Columbia. Her work is gaining national recognition with exhibitions at the Macaulay & Co Fine Arts, Vancouver; the Vancouver Art Gallery; Trinity Square Video, Toronto; Art Mur, Montreal; and the Ottawa Art Gallery. In 2016, she won the William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists from the Hnatyshyn Foundation. She is currently featured in the exhibition wnoondwaamin: we hear them at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, Brandon where she will have a solo exhibition in September 2017.
This artist talk is presented in partnership with the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba.

Plug In ICA extends our gratitude to our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers. With special thanks to our Director’s Circle.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, as well as Payworks and Wawanesa Insurance for the direct support of our youth programs.
Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/support or by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org

For media inquiries please contact: Sarah Nesbitt at sarah@plugin.org or by phone at (204) 942-1043
For general information please contact: info@plugin.org. For media inquiries please contact Sarah Nesbitt: sarah@plugin.org.

Reminder | Call for Applications | Deadline Extended for Summer Institutes I. Chris Kraus (June) and II. Wendy Book Club | Walter Scott & Niki LIttle (July) | New Deadline: March 27, 4pm
2017-03-27 10:00 - 16:00
Summer Institute I: June 13 – 29, 2017 | Faculty: Chris Kraus with Natasha Stagg and Robert Dewhurst
Summer Institute II – The Wendy Book Club: July 14 – August 4, 2017 | Faculty: Walter Scott and Niki Little
Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art • 1-460 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada • 204 942-1043 • info@plugin.org
For our 2017 editions of the Summer Institute, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art’s post-graduate research program, we announce two distinct opportunities. For three weeks in June, participants will work with renowned writer, artist and editor, Chris Kraus with guests Natasha Staggand Robert Dewhurst. For the second session in July, artist, writer and performer, Walter Scott and local curator and artist Niki Little will co-facilitate The Wendy Book Club. These two research-based programs take up writing as an expanded field incorporating elements of critical confession, reflection and artistry.

Summer Institute I: June 13 – 29, 2017
Chris Kraus with special guests Natasha Stagg and Robert Dewhurst
Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is honoured to announce Chris Kraus as faculty for our June 2017 Summer Institute. Kraus, a respected writer, critic, artist, and editor, has had lasting inﬂuence on how art is perceived and discussed. Kraus is recognized for her lucid, playful and provoking ﬁrst-person ﬁction narratives, which frequently blur theory, ﬁction, autobiography, and criticism. In her writing on contemporary art, Kraus has explored boredom, poetry, privatized prisons, community art, corporate philanthropy, vertically integrated manufacturing, and discarded utopias, revealing the surprising persistence of micro-cultures.
For this session of Summer Institute, Kraus will lead a group of participants in a conversation grounded in writing that will range from everyone’s ongoing work to the city of Winnipeg. Activities will likely include the production of a short video, a dance/movement class, city walks and guest screenings and lectures. As a gathering of relative strangers, the participants will produce individual work influenced by each other’s proximity. The workshop is open to visual artists of all kinds as well as writers, critics and scholars.
Writers Natasha Stagg and Robert Dewhurst will join the session. Natasha Stagg was the editor for V Magazine and has most notably published Surveys a novel with Semiotext(e) in March of 2016. She has written for Texte Zur Kunst, Dis Magazine and Kaleidoscope. She received her MFA from the University of Arizona. Robert Dewhurst is currently based in Los Angles, having received his PHd from SUNY Buffalo in English. He is a poet and the publisher of the chapbook imprint Scary Topiary Press and was the publisher of Wild Orchids Journal.
Chris Kraus’ publications, praised for their intelligence, vulnerability and voracity, include: I Love Dick, Torpor, Aliens and Anorexia, Summer of Hate, Where Art Belongs, Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness, and Kelly Lake Store. Her monograph, “Lost Properties,” was written as part of Semiotexte’s pamphlet series for the 2014 Whitney Biennial. Kraus is the co-director of the acclaimed press Semiotext(e), where in 1990 she launched the imprint Native Agents, which introduced radical forms of writing by women writers. Native Agents has published the work of inﬂuential writers such as Penny Arcade, Fanny Howe, Ann Rower and Eileen Myles. She teaches in the Media Studies program at the European Graduate School.

Summer Institute II: July 14 – August 4, 2017
The Wendy Book Club, with Walter Scott and Niki Little
For the July 2017 session of Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art’s Summer Institute, we are pleased to announce Walter Scott and Niki Little as co-faculty. Scott is an emerging artist, performer, writer and graphic novelist, well-known for his beloved graphic novels Wendy which follows the fictional narrative of a young woman living in an urban centre, whose dreams of contemporary art stardom are perpetually derailed by the temptations of punk music, drugs, alcohol, parties, and boys. Little is a Winnipeg-based curator and artist who leads from a feminist and indigenous position to create contexts where untold histories find voices and new futures can be posited. Little is known for her important work with the National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition (NIMAC), as a founding member of the celebrated Indigenous collective, The Ephemerals, and her thoughtful curatorial and artistic projects.
Working together Little and Scott, will facilitate “The Wendy Book Club” over a period of three weeks from July 14 to August 4, 2017. Taking Wendy (2014) and Wendy’s Revenge (2016) as their point of departure, they will use these texts to investigate satire as a strategy for self-reflection and cultural critique, marginalized narratives, and the subjectivities of artist, queer, non-artist, Indigenous, etc. Perceptions of the public and private world of the artist and representations of the art world will be discussed and “dispelled” through Wendy’s perspective.
While moving conceptually through the books, participants will also engage in a constellation of activities reflective of the concerns of their fictional characters. This may take the form of yoga, meditation exercises, and the exploration of esoteric practices such as tarot reading. Throughout the three weeks, “The Wendy Book Club” will take up the specific formal elements that comprise the graphic novel, expanding knowledge about comics and comic making. Scott and Little will additionally invite guest artists, and speakers with specific Indigenous-related knowledge, while also allowing ample studio time to reflect on the understandings generated as a group.
Walter Scott is an interdisciplinary artist working across writing, video, performance and sculpture. In 2011, while living in Montréal, he began the comic book series, Wendy, exploring the narrative of a fictional young woman living in an urban centre who aspires to global success and art stardom but whose dreams are perpetually derailed. Wendy has been featured in Modern Painters, Canadian Art, Mousse Magazine, and Art in America. Recent Exhibitions include the 2016 Montreal Biennale, Le Grand Balcon, Musée d’art contemporain; Big Toe, Giant Steps at Occidental Temporary, Paris; andAmbivalent Pleasures: Vancouver Special, Vancouver Art Gallery.
Niki Little | Wabiska Maengun is an artist, observer, curator, arts administrator and a founding member of The Ephemerals. She is of Cree/English descent from Garden Hill First Nation based in Winnipeg. Her interests lay in artistic and curatorial strategies that investigate cultural consumerism, Indigenous women and feminism, cultural skill-based strategies, and diaspora with a hint of ambivalence. Little is the Director for the National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition and in 2016 curated three group exhibitionsenendaman | anminigook, aceartinc; Lᒫ | Māmāow, Wall-to-Wall Festival; andMELT, Sputnik Architecture.

Each session of the Summer Institute invites participants who wish to work independently or collaboratively, based upon their own interests and projects and includes opportunities to work in a collaborative peer-to-peer environment through group activities, planned during the session.
Deadline for Summer Institute I and II EXTENDED: March 27th, 4pm central time. Please fill out the attached application form for the session you prefer (I or II) and email it along with all supporting materials to Sarah Nesbitt at sarah@plugin.org.
Fees: Tuition is $300. Participants are responsible for their accommodation and travel.

Plug In ICA extends our heartfelt gratitude to our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers. You are making a difference.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, as well as Investors Group and Wawanesa Insurance for the direct support of our youth programs.
Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/support or by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org
For more information on this and our other education programs, contact Sarah Nesbitt at sarah@plugin.org. For general information please contact: info@plugin.org or call 1.204.942.1043.

Co-Production and Coalescence in Fred Sandback's Sculpture | A Respondent Talk by Edward Vazquez
2017-03-24 19:00 - 21:00
On Friday, March 24, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to present a talk with art history scholar Edward Vazquez, author of Aspects: Fred Sandback’s Sculpture (summer 2017), his forthcoming book.
In response to the current exhibition at Plug In ICA, Fred Sandback, A Sampling of Works, Vazquez will provide a broad overview of the artist’s sculptural practice. He will pay particular attention to the situational stakes of Sandback’s work, where early objects and text-based experiments offer a way to contextualize and otherwise situate the yarn work for which he is best known. Looking at the generative moment of Sandback’s sculptural turn in relation to conceptual art, Vazquez will also take up the installation and reception of Sandback’s permanent installation at Dia:Beacon, New York as a summary and introduction to Sandback’s oeuvre and the last work he installed himself before passing in 2003.
Edward Vazquez is known for his work in the area of post-1945 sculpture, with a particular interest in minimalism, post-minimalism, and its reception in the Americas and Europe. Vazquez received his MA in Humanities at the University of Chicago and his PhD in Art and Art History at Stanford University. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Middlebury College in Vermont. Vazquez’s book, Aspects: Fred Sandback’s Sculpture, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press, Summer, 2017
This exhibition and related programs are generously sponsored by Michael Nesbitt.

Plug In ICA extends our gratitude to our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers. With special thanks to our Director’s Circle.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, as well as Payworks and Wawanesa Insurance for the direct support of our youth programs.
Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/supportor by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org

For media inquiries please contact: Sarah Nesbitt at sarah@plugin.org or by phone at (204) 942-1043
For general information please contact: info@plugin.org. For media inquiries please contact Sarah Nesbitt: sarah@plugin.org.

Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art presents: Interpreting [Interrupting] Youth, Screening and Discussion
2017-03-22 16:30 - 18:30
On Wednesday, March 22nd, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to present a short screening and panel with the participants of Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art’s inaugural Interpreting [Interrupting] Youth program.
For this screening Birehanu Bishaw, Victor Ilunga, Brandon McPherson and Tessa Stewart will present a short interpretive video produced by them in collaboration with Plug In ICA, Just TV and the Broadway Neighborhood center. The video is a visual reflection of the youth’s collective and individual experience of the two exhibitions currently on display at Plug In ICA: Angie Keefer’s FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELL and Fred Sandback’s Sampling of Works, as well as aspects of Plug In ICA’s permanent collection and architectural space. The evening begins with a casual reception at 4:30pm, followed by a screening and panel at 5:30pm. Everyone welcome.
Interpreting [Interrupting] Youth is designed for youth ages 16 to 24. The program reverses a pre-existing interpretive model used within arts institutions who often produce short videos as educational devices. These videos often include interviews with artists or curators, images of artworks and installation shots; they often reference artists’ biographies, previous artworks, and at times, glimpse into artists’ studios. These videos are usually presented online or within the gallery or museum in close proximity to the artworks, and tend to place an emphasis on the artist’s and institution’s intention over the experience of the viewer.
The “Interpreting [Interrupting] Youth” program inversely begins with the youth’s experience of the artwork, challenging conventional models of art interpretation by overturning basic roles of authority and authorship.

Next session begins April 8th, 2017. For more information about this and other education programs, please contact Sarah Nesbitt at sarah@plugin.org. For general information please contact: info@plugin.org or call 1.204.942.1043.
Plug In ICA extends our heartfelt gratitude to our generous donors, valued members, and dedicated volunteers. You make a difference.
We gratefully acknowledge the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, as well as Wawanesa Insurance for the direct support of our youth programs.
Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/supportor by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org

Related exhibits:
Fred Sandback, A Sampling of Works
Angie Keefer, FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELL

Plug In ICA and the Stages Speaker Series Presents: Seraphine, Seraphine, A film by and discussion with Krista Belle Stewart
2017-03-18 15:00 - 17:00
Unit 73, CityPlace Mall, 333 St Mary Ave, Winnipeg
Link to talk https://vimeo.com/210434446
On Saturday, March 18th, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to present a screening of Seraphine, Seraphine by Vancouver-based artist Krista Belle Stewart with a discussion to follow. This event marks the premiere presentation of Stewart’s 2014 film in Winnipeg. Using two channels, Seraphine, Seraphine moves between two temporal moments joined by a central figure, Stewart’s mother, Seraphine Stewart. In this presentation a 1967 docu-drama aired by the CBC conveying the story of the first Indigenous public health nurse in British Columbia is situated alongside excerpts of personal testimonial taken in Vancouver by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2013.
The constructed relationship between the films resonates with Stewart’s practice, which regularly makes precise and meaningful use of archival material and relies on juxtaposition to expose colonial erasure and foreground Indigenous identity. This screening comes at a poignant moment, in the wake of recent public remarks by Conservative Senator Lynn Beyak who spoke lamentingly about the absence of a celebratory attitude towards the “kindly and well-intentioned men and women and their descendants” who worked in residential schools. Stewart often draws from her family’s history to address social and political perspectives that have and continue to conceal the direct suppression of Indigenous cultures.
Krista Belle Stewart is known for her ability to draw out the complexities of archival material that allow for both intimacy, coincidence, and an atemporal meeting of histories across time. Working with video, photography, design, ephemera and textiles, Stewart straddles the gaps between personal and institutional histories through transparent mediation. Her work has been exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery; Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Mercer Union, Toronto; and the Esker Foundation, Calgary. Stewart holds an MFA from Bard College, New York. She is a member of the Upper Nicola Band of the Okanagan Nation and is currently based in Vancouver, BC.

This presentation and discussion with Krista Belle Stewart is part of a series of talks featuring artists from Canada and the world. The series is offered in anticipation of Stages: Drawing the Curtain, a constellation of site-specific artworks to be launched in August 2017. This large-scale public art project asks artists to locate a site within the city of Winnipeg from which to contemplate the stage – its function as a platform; its meaning as a point of attention; and its physical design. Directed by their individual interests and material preferences, the artists will build sculptural ‘stages’ ranging in shape and form, connected as platforms for audiences to occupy, physically engage with, and contemplate.
In keeping with the drive of Stages to bring art beyond our walls, all talks for Stages Speaker Series will be held at an off-site location: Unit 73, CityPlace Mall, 333 St Mary Ave, Winnipeg, MB R3C 4A5.
*Artists for Stages: Drawing the Curtain include: Abbas Akhavan (Toronto), Pablo Bronstein (London, UK), FASTWÜRMS (Toronto), Toril Johannessen (Tromsø, Norway), Kara Hamilton (Toronto), Frederico Herrero (San José, Costa Rica), Divya Mehra (Winnipeg), and Krista Belle Stewart (Vancouver).

Stages Speaker Series and Stages: Drawing the Curtain are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts through its New Chapter Program.
Our community partners include Winnipeg Tourism, Alliance Française Manitoba, Urban Ink Design, CityPlace Mall (Triovest) and Fillip Publishers. Plug In ICA extends our heartfelt gratitude to our generous donors, valued members, and dedicated volunteers. You make a difference.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts New Chapter Fund, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, as well as Wawanesa Insurance for the direct support of our youth programs.
Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/supportor by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org
For more information on this and our other education programs, contact Sarah Nesbitt at sarah@plugin.org. For general information please contact: info@plugin.org or call 1.204.942.1043

Related exhibit:
STAGES: Drawing the Curtain

Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art Presents: The Unmanageable Artist, A Respondent Talk by Howie Chen
2017-03-16 19:00 - 21:00
On Thursday, March 16th, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art presents a respondent talk with New York based artist, writer, educator and curator, Howie Chen. Chen’s background in economics conjoins with a visual acuity resulting in a unique critical perspective towards the production and dissemination of art. For this talk, Chen will take up managerial technologies in Western democratic societies as they have been shaped by increased demand for autonomy and a creative life. As a template for self-sufficiency, the ‘unmanageable’ artist now faces a critical crisis of contradictions and precarity. Using Managerialism as a backdrop, he will examine current dissonance within art discourse and its relation to the rise of neoliberalism and reactionary politics today.
As a respondent, Chen’s poetic, critical and interdisciplinary methodology resonates with Keefer’s treatment of class, interest in the visual language of marketing, exploitation of public trust, and abstracted circulation of information addressed in her solo exhibition, FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELL currently on display at Plug In.
Howie Chen is a New York–based curator engaged in collaborative art production and research. His curatorial and institutional work experience includes the Whitney Museum of American Art and MoMA PS1 (New York). He is a founder of Dispatch, a NYC curatorial production office and JEQU, a research project to assess how sociological and cultural economic approaches to art world debates can augment artistic critique. In 2003, with artist Mika Tajima, he formed New Humans, a moniker for collaborations with musicians, artists and designers that was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and has more recently undertaken projects at SFMOMA (San Francisco) and South London Gallery. Writings include IRL (Primary Information) and Transformers(Badlands Unlimited). Chen was recently the Jane Farver Memorial curator in residence at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP).

The exhibition FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELL by Angie Keefer is generously sponsored by Video Pool and William F. White International Inc., Winnipeg.

Plug In ICA extends our gratitude to our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, as well as Investors Group and Wawanesa Insurance for the direct support of our youth programs.
Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/supportor by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org

For media inquiries please contact: Sarah Nesbitt at sarah@plugin.org or by phone at (204) 942-1043
For general information please contact: info@plugin.org.

Stages Speaker Series: Artist Talk by Kara Hamilton
2017-03-09 19:00 - 21:00
Kara Hamilton
WHEN IS A PLATFORM A STAGE?
Thursday, March 9, 2017 | 7:00pm

Link to talk https://vimeo.com/210326434
On Thursday, March 9 at 7pm, Plug In ICA presents an artist talk by Toronto-based, multi-media artist, Kara Hamilton. Activating the history of set design, architecture, and craft, Hamilton’s exhibitions often perform like stages with object characters. For her talk at Plug In ICA, WHEN IS A PLATFORM A STAGE?, Hamilton will lead us through an inquiry that takes up the stage as author and architectural form, incorporating aspects of her practice and her ongoing fascination with the performative nature of materials. Thinking in comparative terms, Hamilton sets up the dialectic: If the stage is the architecture of an audience and a platform is the architecture of congregation; do musicians perform or lead? And actors? What can be said of the objects?
Kara Hamilton’s work integrates objects of various materials, including brass, marble, and glass. Building prototypes that actively respond to their context, or props that may be potential collaborations, Hamilton’s exhibitions have been described as dioramic in structure, allowing viewers to move through the work, transformed into supporting characters to the objects that lead. Hamilton received her Bachelor in Architecture from the University of British Colombia, and her MFA in sculpture from Yale. She has shown extensively in North America and Europe at venues including Salon 94, New York; EFA Project Space, New York; Kate Werble Gallery, New York; Siegel House, Marfa, Texas; Taut and Tame, Berlin; G Gallery, Toronto; and Tatar Gallery, Toronto. She is represented by Salon 94. Hamilton with Kari Cwynar form the curatorial team of Kunstverein Toronto.

Over the next three months, Plug In ICA will present a series of talks featuring artists from Canada and the world. The series is offered in anticipation of Stages: Drawing the Curtain, a constellation of site-specific artworks to be launched in August 2017. This large-scale public art project asks artists to locate a site within the city of Winnipeg from which to contemplate the stage – its function as a platform; its meaning as a point of attention; and its physical design. Directed by their individual interests and material preferences, the artists will build sculptural ‘stages’ ranging in shape and form, connected as platforms for audiences to occupy, physically engage with, and contemplate.
The Stages Speaker Series commences with Norwegian artist, Toril Johannessen, known for captivating installations that incorporate scientific methods, materials and language to poetic ends; and Toronto-based artist, Kara Hamilton, who questions object-subject relations in her dioramic installations.
In keeping with the drive of Stages to bring art beyond our walls, all talks for Stages Speaker Series will be held at an off-site location: Unit 73, CityPlace Mall, 333 St Mary Ave, Winnipeg, MB R3C 4A5.
Artists for Stages: Drawing the Curtain include: Abbas Akhavan (Toronto), Pablo Bronstein (London, UK), FASTWÜRMS (Toronto), Toril Johannessen (Tromsø, Norway), Kara Hamilton (Toronto), Federico Herrero (San José, Costa Rica), Divya Mehra (Winnipeg), and Krista Belle Stewart (Vancouver).

Stages Speaker Series and Stages: Drawing the Curtain are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts through its New Chapter Program.
Our community partners include Winnipeg Tourism, Alliance Française Manitoba, Urban Ink Design, CityPlace Mall (Triovest) and Fillip Publishers.

Plug In ICA extends our heartfelt gratitude to our generous donors, valued members, and dedicated volunteers. You make a difference.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts New Chapter Fund, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, as well as Wawanesa Insurance for the direct support of our youth programs.
Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs.
Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/support or by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org
For more information on this and our other education programs, contact Sarah Nesbitt at sarah@plugin.org.
For general information please contact: info@plugin.org or call 1.204.942.1043

Related exhibit:
STAGES: Drawing the Curtain

Stages Speaker Series: Artist Talk by Toril Johannessen
2017-03-06 19:00 - 21:00
Link to talk https://vimeo.com/210273398
As part of our Stages Speaker Series, on Monday, March 6 at 7pm, Plug In ICA presents an artist talk by Norwegian artist, Toril Johannessen. Working in a range of media including photography, text, drawing, and installation, Johannessen’s practice verges on the scientific. From the collection of Icelandic Spar to an Aurora from the equator, she focuses her research on perception, often building disorienting installations. For her talk, Johannessen will give an introduction to her work with specific emphasis on the ongoing project,Unlearning Optical Illusions (I), (II), and (III].
Toril Johannessen’s practice engages methods and source material from the domains of science. Thematically, her work spans a wide range of interests, from visual perception to linguistics; impossible energy cycles; alternative methods for time measurement; optical illusions and spatial disorientation. By combining scientific fact and the history of science with her own investigations, she applies a critical and subjective view of the impact of modern science on the production of knowledge. She received her MA from the Bergen Academy of Art and Design. In addition, she studied at Mountain School of Art, and took part in the artist-in-residence program at WIELS, Brussels. She has exhibited widely, at venues and biennales including dOCUMENTA 13; the Istanbul Biennial; deAppel, Amsterdam; Witte de With, Rotterdam; the Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg; and Palais de Tokyo, Paris.

Over the next three months, Plug In ICA will present a series of talks featuring artists from Canada and the world. The series is offered in anticipation ofStages: Drawing the Curtain, a constellation of site-specific artworks to be launched in August 2017. This large-scale public art project asks artists to locate a site within the city of Winnipeg from which to contemplate the stage – its function as a platform; its meaning as a point of attention; and its physical design. Directed by their individual interests and material preferences, the artists will build sculptural ‘stages’ ranging in shape and form, connected as platforms for audiences to occupy, physically engage with, and contemplate.
The Stages Speaker Series commences with Norgwegian artist, Toril Johannessen, known for captivating installations that incorporate scientific methods, materials and language to poetic ends; and Toronto-based artist, Kara Hamilton, who questions object-subject relations in her dioramic installations.
In keeping with the drive of Stages to bring art beyond our walls, all talks forStages Speaker Series will be held at an off-site location: Unit 73, City Place Mall, 333 St Mary Ave, Winnipeg, MB R3C 4A5.
Artists for Stages: Drawing the Curtain include: Abbas Akhavan (Toronto), Pablo Bronstein (London, UK), FASTWÜRMS (Toronto), Toril Johannessen (Tromsø, Norway), Kara Hamilton (Toronto), Federico Herrero (San Jose, Costa Rica), Divya Mehra (Winnipeg), and Krista Belle Stewart (Vancouver).
Stages Speaker Series and Stages: Drawing the Curtain are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts through its New Chapter Program.

Related exhibit:
STAGES: Drawing the Curtain

Cat's Cradle Workshop with Hannah Doucet
2017-02-26 11:00 - 13:00
“We all need a place for play, whether it’s jump rope, base-ball, or making a sculpture… My knitting-yarn sculpture is a somewhat distant cousin to some other string games. Maybe the one that uses the most space is kite flying. But the one that is the oldest, and the most universal is cat’s cradle.” – Fred Sandback, “Children’s Guide to Seeing”, Contemporary Arts Museum, Texas, 1989.
Evoking Sandback’s relationship to play on Sunday, February 26th from 11:00am-12:00pm, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art will host a cat’s cradle workshop with artist and educator, Hannah Doucet.
For this workshop, Doucet will trace a brief cross-cultural history of string games that she will activate through demonstration and instruction. Participants will have the opportunity to playfully engage Sandback’s work through the materiality of string—its accessibility and malleability within his sculptures. The experiments with string will evolve from the creation of individual forms to collaborative games expanding to involve the production of multi-person, large-scale constructions.
The workshop will be 40 minutes to an hour and is open to children ages 6 and up. Everyone welcome! Juice and snacks will be served.
Hannah Doucet is a photo-based artist from Winnipeg, Canada whose art practice incorporates a range of media and material including sculpture, textile, video, and installation. Often engaged with the body, Doucet’s work explores the abilities and failures implicit within visual representation and material. Doucet received her BFA, honours from the University of Manitoba’s School of Art in 2015. Solo exhibitions of her work include I Never Recognized Her Except In Fragments at the New Gallery, Calgary (2016) and Present Absence at C Space Gallery, Winnipeg (2015). Doucet’s work has been featured in many group exhibitions locally and nationally, recently includingProof 23 at Gallery 44, Toronto (2016), Anticipating Distance at Avenue Gallery, Vancouver (2015), and Fresh Paint, New Construction at Art Mur, Montreal (2015). In addition to being a professional artist, Doucet is a facilitator at Art City in Winnipeg.
This exhibition and related programs are generously sponsored by Michael Nesbitt.

RELATED PROGRAMS:
Thursday, March 16 | 7:00pm: Respondent Series: Talk by Howie Chen (Angie Keefer exhibition)
Friday, March 24 | 7:00pm: Respondent Series: Talk by Edward A. Vazquez

Plug In ICA extends our gratitude to our valued donors and our appreciation to our membership and volunteers.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, as well as Investors Group and Wawanesa Insurance for the direct support of our youth programs.
Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/support or by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org
For media inquiries please contact: Sarah Nesbitt at sarah@plugin.org or by phone at (204) 942-1043
For general information please contact: info@plugin.org. For media inquiries please contact Sarah Nesbitt: sarah@plugin.org

Contract Employment Opportunity: Project Coordinator. Deadline: February 20th, 2017
2017-02-20
Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art seeks an experienced individual to coordinate Stages: Drawing the Curtain, a major public art project to take place throughout the city of Winnipeg in August 2017.
According to priorities established by the Executive Director, the Project Coordinator will lead the successful delivery of this ambitious public art project, featuring newly commissioned artwork. Plug In has invited nine artists from around the world to contemplate the stage – its function as a platform; its meaning as a point of attention and its physical design. The sculptural ‘stages’ will take many shapes and forms but each is intended to be platforms for performers or audiences to occupy, physically engage and contemplate.
The ideal candidate will have previous experience in communications, managing budgets, coordinating human and material resources, and an established track record in coordinating projects in the visual arts or with not-for-profit organizations. Working on average 40 hours per week, with variability as this position will be required from time-to-time to work evenings, and weekends. Preferred three-to-five years previous experience in arts and project management (or combination thereof), and a relevant post-secondary education.
While this position has a range of accountabilities that relate to ongoing Plug In operations, it is dedicated to the successful coordination of one large-scale project. The successful candidate will provide support and implement a major visual arts project working with the Director, the artists, Plug In staff, contractors and collaborators to implement various aspects of the project.
This is a seven-month contract full-time position for March 1 – September 30, 2017. A job description is available to download.
Interested candidates should submit a curriculum vitae and letter of interest by 4pm central time on Monday, February 20, 2017. Plug In thanks all candidates for their interest, but only those to be interviewed will be contacted.
Please submit applications to: Angela Forget, Operations Coordinator, angela@plugin.org or, Unit 1, 460 Portage Ave, Winnipeg MB R3C 0E8
File Download:
Stages Project Manager 2017 job description

Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art presents: MARKERS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS, A Respondent Talk by Evelyn Forget (economist)
2017-02-16 19:00 - 21:00
As part of our ongoing Respondent Series, on Thursday, February 16th starting at 7pm, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art presents a talk by Evelyn Forget. Forget is an economist, and is the Academic Director of the Manitoba Research Data Centre, as well as a Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba.
For her talk, “Markers of the Middle Class”, Forget will respond to the shifting markers of social class provoked in Angie Keefer’s exhibition FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELL currently on display at Plug In ICA. Here, Forget speculates about whether a perceived decline in the middle class accounts for the rise of populist movements today. She will trace the evolution of the middle class and its characteristic attributes from the Netherlands in the 16th century, through the French Revolution to its peak in postwar America. As outlined by economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey, Forget will identify a set of bourgeois virtues attributed to the middle class, and also the vices more often seen by outsiders – artists and bohemian critics.
Evelyn Forget is an economist and professor from the Rady School of Medicine at the University of Manitoba. Her research attempts to answer the question: “How can we best ensure that everyone has access to the tools and resources they need to live a full life?” She works in the areas of health economics and the history and philosophy of economics. Her public policy work examines the relationships between poverty, inequality, health and social outcomes, and quality of life. Most recently, she recovered and analyzed the data collected during a Guaranteed Annual Income experiment (called Mincome) that was conducted in Manitoba during the 1970s, and is currently involved in the development of a similar experiment to be conducted in Ontario this spring.
Angie Keefer, FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELL is generously sponsored by Video Pool and William F. White International Inc., Winnipeg.

Plug In ICA extends our gratitude to our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, as well as Investors Group and Wawanesa Insurance for the direct support of our youth programs.
Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/support or by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org
For media inquiries please contact: Sarah Nesbitt at sarah@plugin.org or by phone at (204) 942-1043. For general information please contact: info@plugin.org. For media inquiries please contact Sarah Nesbitt: sarah@plugin.org

RELATED PROGRAMS:
Thursday, March 16 | 7:00pm: Respondent Series: Talk by Howie Chen
Friday, March 24 | 7:00pm: Respondent Series (Fred Sandback exhibition): Talk by Edward A. Vazquez

Related exhibit:
Angie Keefer, FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELL

Tournée guidée en français de deux nouvelles expositions solo des artistes Angie Keefer et Fred Sandback
2017-02-04 15:00 - 16:00
Le samedi le 4 février, Plug In ICA présente une tournée guidée en français par Janelle Tougas des expositions FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELL d’Angie Keefer et une sélection d’oeuvres de Fred Sandback.
Angie Keefer
FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELL
FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELL est une exposition de nouvelles œuvres par Angie Keefer, une artiste estimée pour son profond engagement discursif dans le monde des arts visuels. Ses projets passent du design à l’édition, de l’écriture à la performance, de l’installation à l’enseignement et remettent toujours en question ses reflexes qui lient les formes symboliques et matérielles à la fluctuation d’activité sur les marchés financiers et les marchés de la connaissance.
Trois nouvelles œuvres sont présentées sous une exposition commune divisée dans deux espaces distincts, séparant ainsi le rôle de l’observateur et le rôle de l’acteur chez le participant. FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELL occupe l’écran dans le passage couvert à l’entrée du Plug In ICA, tandis que la galerie qui donne sur la rue sert de studio de production et de salle d’exposition. Ces œuvres complexes captent et projettent l’image des visiteurs, les impliquant dans une trajectoire historique qui mène vers les démarcations commerciales et actuelles du statut de première classe.
Angie Keefer est artiste, écrivaine, enseignante et éditrice. Par contre, la distinction entre ces catégories dans l’œuvre de Keefer est beaucoup plus floue que ces titres laissent entendre. Elle s’intéresse aux particularités fortuites de la création et de la distribution de l’art – à la prise de position critique ou commerciale par le langage, au travail qui l’entoure, et aux forces mouvantes du marché – Keefer dévoile et met à l’épreuve ce qui supporte le tout. Elle a souvent présenté ses œuvres aux États-Unis, en Europe et en Amérique du Sud. Parmi ses expositions récentes, on retrouve Greater New York, PS1, New York (2015-16); Kunstverein Munich (2015); la Whitney Biennial, New York (2014); Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp (2013-14); et Yale Union, Portland (2013). Keefer travaille aussi avec une variété d’organismes pour monter des performances, des conférences et des séminaires, ainsi que d’autres séries parmi lesquelles on retrouve Artists Space, New York (2015); le Liverpool Biennial (2014); Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius (2014, 2011); le Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brézil (2013); Witte de With, Rotterdam (2013); le São Paulo Biennial, Brézil (2012); et le Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012). Ses textes ont paru récemment dans Mousse, Harvard Design Magazine, et Bulletins of The Serving Library.
PROGRAMMATION CONNEXE:
Jeudi le 16 février | 19h : Respondent Series : Discussion avec Evelyn Forget
Jeudi le 16 mars | 19h : Respondent Series: Conférence d’artiste par Howie Chen
Cette exposition est commanditée en partie par Video Pool Media Arts Centre à Winnipeg.
Fred Sandback
Une sélection d’œuvres
Les œuvres de Fred Sandback sont difficiles à décrire puisqu’elles contiennent une énergie générée par les gestes et les moyens les plus simples pour produire de grands effets. Sandback abandonne l’objet afin de dessiner dans l’espace. À partir de matériaux standard achetés en magasin, il façonne une expérience épurée et précise de l’espace. Utilisant le plus fréquemment du fil acrylique, il dessine des lignes qui activent l’espace et qui créent des volumes dans des chambres autrement vides. Il expose ce qui s’y trouve déjà, donnant au vide une définition.
Son exposition au Plug In est une sélection d’œuvres de sa pratique sculpturale qui comprend des pièces horizontales et verticales qui s’étendent du sol au plafond, le long des murs, et en lignes droites et diagonales. La couleur donne une résonnance émotionnelle aux lignes, à l’énergie et aux formes qui se dévoilent graduellement tout au long de la rencontre perceptuelle du visiteur.
Fred Sandback (1943-2003) a exposé ses œuvres internationalement à compter de l’année 1968. Ses premières expositions en solo ont lieu à la Galerie Konrad Fischer à Düsseldorf et à la Galerie Heiner Friedrich à Munich. Il était étudiant de maitrise en beaux arts à l’école d’art et d’architecture de Yale lors de celles-ci. En 2005, Le Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein à Vaduz organise une vaste étude des œuvres de Sandback. Ce projet voyage au Fruitmarket Gallery à Édinbourg et à la Neue Galerie am Joanneum à Graz en 2006. En 2011, ses œuvres sont présentées dans une exposition en solo au Whitechapel Gallery à Londres, puis au Museum of Contemporary Art à Denver. Ce dernier consacre le bâtiment en entier à cette exposition. En 2014, le Kunstmuseum Winterthur en Suisse accueille une importante rétrospective de ses dessins qui est ensuite montrée au Josef Albers Museum à Bottrop et au Museum Wiesbaden en Allemagne. De mai à septembre 2015, le Pulitzer Art Foundation à St. Louis présente aussi une exposition de ses œuvres. Lié à l’exposition du même nom, Fred Sandback: Light, Space, Facts at The Glenstone Foundation, Potomac, Md (parue en 2016) est la plus récentes des nombreuses publications sur son œuvre. En 2017, le University of Chicago Press publieraAspects: Fred Sandback’s Sculptures par Edward A. Vazquez. On retrouve aussi ses sculptures dans plusieurs collections de musées à l’international et dans une exposition permanente au Dia:Beacon à New York. Le patrimoine de Sandback est représenté par David Zwirner, New York/Londres et un historique complet de ses expositions et de sa bibliographie est disponible en ligne au site www.fredsandbackarchive.org.
PROGRAMMATION CONNEXE:
Samedi le 21 janvier | 15h : Tournée guidée par Amavong Panya
Dimanche le 26 février | 11h : Cat’s Cradle – un atelier pour enfants mené par Hannah Doucet
Vendredi le 24 mars | 19h : Respondent Series: Discussion par Edward A. Vazquez
Cette exposition et la programmation connexe est généreusement commanditée par Michael Nesbitt.
Les textes descriptifs des expositions sont disponibles en anglais à plugin.org

Exhibition Tour by Amavong Panya
2017-01-21 15:00 - 16:30
On Saturday January 21, 3pm, join us for a walk through of the Fred Sandback exhibition, A Sampling of Works with Chief Installer and artist Amavong Panya.

Panya’s intimate knowledge of Sandback’s sculptures will offer valuable insight into the work of this important American artist.

“It is my belief Fred’s work is a deliberate and experiential conversation of space and sometimes the unnoticed architectural and functional details of a room and its physical constructs such as a wall, floor, ceiling or combination of those elements. The idea of sculpture and the viewer’s movement to “see” a sculpture alllows another depth to the ultimate conversation of Fred Sandback’s catalog of work.”

Amavong Panya is an artist and co-owner of NFA SPACE Contemporary Art + Exhibit Services, Inc. based in Chicago, IL USA. Among its many clients, The Fred Sandback Estate has cooperated with Amavong Panya as the Chief Installer and Installation Expert of Fred Sandback’s work for over a decade. The continued interest, dialogue and admiration of Fred’s work has brought forth various installation projects and exhibitions around the globe such as the Kuntsmuseum in Vaduz, LI; Instituto Moreira Salles in Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro BR; Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, CO USA; Gallery New South Wales in Sydney, AU and more recently the Glenstone Museum in Potomac, MD USA.

Related exhibit:
Fred Sandback, A Sampling of Works

Plug In ICA Launches Two New Solo Exhibitions with Angie Keefer and Fred Sandback
2017-01-21 10:00 - 2017-03-26 18:00
Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is extremely pleased to announce the launch of our winter program with two solo exhibitions by acclaimed American artists Angie Keefer and Fred Sandback. Keefer is known for her complex portrayal of art and economics and Sandback is historically renowned for his perceptual sculpture made from simple means in command of light and space. These presentations mark their first solo exhibitions in Canada. The exhibition launches with an artist talk by Angie Keefer on Thrusday, January 19 at 7pm, an opening reception on Friday, January 20 at 7pm, and a walk-through of Sandback’s exhibition by Amavong Panya on Saturday, January 21 at 3pm.
Angie Keefer
FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELL

FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELL is an exhibition of new work by Angie Keefer, an artist admired for her deep discursive engagement in the visual arts. Her work moves between design and publishing, writing, performance, installation, and teaching, and is often unsettled in its reflexive linking of symbolic or material form with the fluctuating activity of financial and knowledge markets.

Three new works are presented as a unified exhibition divided among two distinct spaces, separating the viewer’s experiences as witness and performer. FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELLoccupies Plug In ICA’s exhibition breezeway on a monitor wall and our street front gallery, which Keefer turns into a production studio and showroom. These complex works capture and project the image of their audience, implicating viewers in a historic trajectory leading towards the contemporary, commercial delineation of first class status.

Angie Keefer is an artist, writer, teacher, and publisher, though the distinctions among these categories are much less definitive in Keefer’s work than comma-separated terms would indicate. Taking an interest in the incidental aspects of art making and its dissemination—from critical & commercial positioning through language, to surrounding labour, and shifting market forces—Keefer exposes and pushes at the seams of that which holds the enterprise together. She has exhibited extensively in the USA as well as Europe and South America. Recent exhibitions include Greater New York, PS1, New York (2015-16); Kunstverein Munich (2015); Whitney Biennial, New York (2014); Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp (2013-14); and Yale Union, Portland (2013). Keefer has also worked with various organizations to stage performances, talks, seminars, and other series, including Artists Space, New York (2015); Liverpool Biennial (2014); Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius (2014, 2011); Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2013); Witte de With, Rotterdam (2013); São Paulo Biennial, Brazil (2012); and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012), among others. Her writing has recently appeared in Mousse, Harvard Design Magazine, and Bulletins of The Serving Library.

RELATED PROGRAMS:
Thursday, January 19 | 7:00pm: Artist Talk by Angie Keefer
Thursday, February 16 | 7:00pm: Respondent Series: Talk by Evelyn Forget
Thursday, March 16 | 7:00pm: Respondent Series: Artist Talk by Howie Chen

This exhibition is sponsored in part by Video Pool Media Arts Centre, Winnipeg.
Fred Sandback
A Sampling of Works

It is difficult to describe Fred Sandback’s artworks as they contain an energy that is generated from the simplest of means and most minimal of gestures to the most maximal effects. Sandback leaves the object behind to draw in space. Using ordinary store bought materials in a seemingly minimal and precise manner, he redefines our experience of space. Most commonly, he uses acrylic yarn to draw lines that articulate space, delineating volume in otherwise empty rooms, over ostensibly bare walls from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. He exposes what is already there seemingly giving definition to air.
His exhibition for Plug In is a sampling of this sculptural practice that includes both vertical and horizontal pieces that stretch from floor to ceiling, across walls, and in straight and diagonal lines. The artist’s use of colour adds an emotional vibrancy as line, shape, and energy reveal themselves gradually within the viewer’s perceptual encounter.
Fred Sandback (1943-2003) exhibited internationally from 1968 when his first solo shows were held at Galerie Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf, and Galerie Heiner Friedrich, Munich, while the artist was still a graduate student pursuing his MFA at the Yale School of Art and Architecture. The Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz, organized an extensive survey in 2005, which traveled to the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, and the Neue Galerie am Joanneum, Graz, in 2006. In 2011, his work was featured in a solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and the same year the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, dedicated its entire building to a solo exhibition. In 2014, the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland hosted a major retrospective of his drawings that subsequently traveled to the Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop and Museum Wiesbaden, Germany. The Pulitzer Art Foundation, St. Louis, mounted an exhibition from May to September 2015. There are numerous publications on his work, the most recent in 2016 documenting Fred Sandback: Light, Space, Facts at The Glenstone Foundation, Potomac, Md. Aspects: Fred Sandback’s Sculptures by Edward A. Vazquez will be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2017. Sandback’s sculpture is represented in numerous museum collections internationally and is on permanent view at Dia:Beacon, New York. His estate is represented by David Zwirner, New York/London and a complete exhibition history and bibliography is available online at www.fredsandbackarchive.org.

RELATED PROGRAMS:
Saturday, January 21 | 3:00pm: Exhibition Tour by Amavong Panya
Sunday, February 26 | 11:00am: Cat’s Cradle – a children’s workshop lead by Hannah Doucet
Date to be determined | Respondent Series: Talk by Edward A. Vazquez

This exhibition and related programs are generously sponsored by Michael Nesbitt.

Full length exhibition texts are available on plugin.org

Plug In ICA gratefully acknowledges the continued support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We would also like to acknowledge the support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their contribution to our artistic programs. As always we extend our appreciation to our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers.
Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/support or by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org
For general information please contact: info@plugin.org. For media inquiries please contact Sarah Nesbitt: sarah@plugin.org

Exhibition Tour and Artist Talk with Angie Keefer
2017-01-19 19:00 - 21:00
On Thursday, January 19th, in conjunction with her solo exhibition at Plug In ICA, FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELL American artist Angie Keefer will be giving an exhibition tour including an in depth discussion around each of the works, and a question and answer period.
Angie Keefer is an artist, writer, teacher, and publisher, though the distinctions among these categories are much less definitive in Keefer’s work than comma-separated terms would indicate. Taking an interest in the incidental aspects of art making and its dissemination—from critical & commercial positioning through language, to surrounding labour, and shifting market forces—Keefer exposes and pushes at the seams of that which holds the enterprise together. She has exhibited extensively in the USA as well as Europe and South America. Recent exhibitions include Greater New York, PS1, New York (2015-16); Kunstverein Munich (2015); Whitney Biennial, New York (2014); Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp (2013-14); and Yale Union, Portland (2013). Keefer has also worked with various organizations to stage performances, talks, seminars, and other series, including Artists Space, New York (2015); Liverpool Biennial (2014); Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius (2014, 2011); Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2013); Witte de With, Rotterdam (2013); São Paulo Biennial, Brazil (2012); and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012), among others. Her writing has recently appeared in Mousse, Harvard Design Magazine, and Bulletins of The Serving Library.
For more information about the exhibition see: Angie Keefer: FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELL
This exhibition is sponsored in part by Video Pool Media Arts Centre and William F. White International Inc., Winnipeg

Related exhibit:
Angie Keefer, FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELL
