Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is delighted to present:
One eye filled with night
An exhibition featuring Laura Lewis
October 23, 2026 – January 9, 2027
Opening Reception | Friday, October 23, 2026, 6 – 8PM
Artist Talk & Cinq à sept | Thursday, November 12, 2026, 5 – 7PM
Curatorial Talk & Tour | Saturday, November 28, 2026, 2 – 3PM
Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is thrilled to announce One eye filled with night, an exhibition featuring artist, Laura Lewis.
Inspired by Sarah Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology, Lewis locates her interest in how domestic spaces, and objects shape queer identities. The compositions depict 2SLGBTQIA+ friends in their personal and familiar spaces layered with heady references to film noir, photography, and historical paintings. Often working at an experiential scale, these works solicit viewers to project themselves into the tableaux and join in the dramatic, intimate scenescapes.
Lewis creates an affective vision of environment and objecthood, where she explores dualities like desire/disgust and bliss/anguish through various painterly strategies. Borrowing narrative devices from filmic traditions, non-figurative works or “object scenes,” as Lewis refers to them, are companion to the portraits, revelatory clues to understanding this environment and its constituents. In some works, strategy and reference brush up against each other, building into a palpable compositional tension where looking feels nearly intrusive.
One eye filled with night navigates an interplay between psychological and physical space, the ego-centric and bodily focused affect, and the allocentric described physical space. As Ahmed explains in Queer Phenomenology, normative public and private spaces are encoded as heterosexual and cisgender, producing a disorientation for queer bodies within them. Lewis doesn’t resolve or even depict this tension; rather, this body of work uses a referential matrix of her own creation as an expository tool to make visible a dislocation.
This exhibition was initiated by Allison Yearwood, with contributions from Gilles Hébert.
Laura Lewis is a queer visual artist from Halifax, Nova Scotia, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her conceptual figurative painting practice explores psychosexuality and nuances of the human condition. Lewis holds a BFA Honours degree from University of Manitoba. She has exhibited across Canada and participated in various international artist residencies.
Acknowledgments
We are on Treaty 1 Territory. Plug In ICA is located on the territories of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and the National homeland of the Red River Métis. Our water is sourced from Shoal Lake 40 First Nation.
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 could not operate without their continued financial investment and lobbying efforts.
Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, 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 Nadja Pelkey, Director/Curator at executivedirector@plugin.org.
For more information on public programming and exhibitions contact info@plugin.org.
For general information, please contact: info@plugin.org or call 1.204.942.1043