Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to present:

Summer Institute 2024: Cartography of Emotions

led by faculties Irene Campolmi and Linda Lamignan

July 15 – 27, 2024

This year’s iteration of The Summer Institute, Cartography of Emotions, will be led by curator Irene Campolmi with guest faculty Linda Lamignan.

Cartography of Emotions expands on those aspects central to the exhibition A Place of Memory: Contexts of Existence, thus reflecting on the notion of context: what it is, what it means, and how it creates the conditions for artists to manifest new views of the world we live in, by creating art that generates a feeling similar to the ‘overview effect’- the effect experienced by astronauts when, up in the space, they are able to get an overview of Earth in its totality, and see humanity . A context is a field of interactions, understood as both a physical, geographically located place and a series of emotional, social, and political events occurring at a specific moment in time. In both cases, a context defines the spatial and temporal coordinates in our collective memory where an individual’s story merges, for a moment, with history writ large.

The Summer Institute brings into play two key figures of this show, the curator Irene Campolmi and the featured artist, Linda Lamignan, working together as faculty members. The sessions will investigate various aspects: from decolonizing cartography, to looking as objects, food and materials as ancestral presences testifying untold or forgotten histories and learning to use hypnosis as a tool to enter in contact with a more conscious connection to the world.

We will learn how to recognize, value and draw one’s emotional map to navigate the landscapes where one has travelled, or been forced to travel, across different geographical locations, often longing for their context of origin, sometimes belonging to spots where they stopped while in transit. 

Cartography of Emotions a group exhibition featuring the work of the Summer Institute participants, is on view until August 9, 2024

PUBLIC EVENTS:

Saturday, July 27 | 6 – 9 pm | Open Studios

All public events will take place at Plug In ICA.

FACULTY: 

Currently Senior Curator for International Projects at KØS Museum of Art in Public Spaces, Irene Campolmi has worked as a curator and researcher at international and Danish art institutions for the past 14 years, including theEstonia Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, TANK Museum, Musée d’art de Joliette, The Power Plant, Muséed’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul, MAAT, Walk&Talk,and Kunsthal Charlottenborg. In 2021, she won the Bikuben Foundation’s Vision Award with Copenhagen Contemporary for Yet, it Moves! Campolmi holds an MA in Art History and Museology from the University of Florence and was a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute.

Linda Lamignan is a non-gender-identified artist, born in Norway to a Nigerian family, and currently based in Denmark. Their practice unfolds through sculpture, performance, film, sound, and lyrics that they write, compose, and perform. As they look into how people, plants, fruits, and inorganic elements are frequently subject to being taken away from their place of origin and forced to recontextualize elsewhere, their work usually unfolds through several chapters that compose a more extensive body of work, usually titled after a poem, a lyric, or a book.

PARTICIPANTS:

Ebunoluwa Akinbo is a Nigerian visual artist born in 1994. She combines her background in Sociology with her education in Fine Arts in exploring the themes of memory, identity, and migration in her evolving practice. She uses the camera as her primary tool in communicating these themes in a figurative and abstract form to captivate her audience, by constantly unraveling the non-literality of photography in her work.

Derek Brueckner is a visual artist and educator whose work features video from socially collaborative and unscripted performances. His multidisciplinary practice involves drawing, painting, live-feed projections, and performance. His work often operates as live public laboratory spaces where performers use his installations to showcase their inventive minds, voices, and bodies. Residencies in Vermont, Brooklyn, New Orleans, and Toronto inspired work later refined for exhibition and performance spaces in Brooklyn, Queens, and New Orleans. He also co-hosts an arts talk radio show on CKUW 95.9 FM at the University of Winnipeg. His education includes an MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York.

Fiona Crangle

Through paintings, drawings, and installations, Fiona Crangle studies the human moments that demand a shift in ways of thinking and being. Her work investigates gesture as a means to unlearn a worldview. Crangle works collaboratively to explore default gestures as signifiers of a held mindset, where others direct and participate in the making of their image..

Crangle holds a B.F.A. and a B.Ed. and runs a mentoring style studio space. She cofounded and sits on the curatorial committee of a grass roots art centre, Critical Mass, which engages Port Hope, Ontario in contemporary art experiences through residencies, installations and community projects.

Clint Enns is an artist, curator, and writer based in Tiohtià:ke / Montréal. His most recent project, Internet Vernacular, deals with vernacular photography obtained while searching through the “digitally abandoned” online photographic archives of users who haven’t posted in years. By uploading their photographs online, amateur photographers were unknowingly participating in the evolution of the internet and the birth of what sociologist Nathan Jurgenson describes as “the social photo,” those everyday photos that are “taken to be shared.” 

Lindsay Inglis is an arts writer, researcher, and curator from Winnipeg, Manitoba on Treaty One Territory. She holds an MA from the University of St. Andrews and a BFA from the University of Manitoba, both in Art History, and has just completed an MBA in Art Management from SDA Bocconi. Lindsay has worked in cultural organizations throughout the Canadian prairies and in Italy and has contributed to arts publications such as Canadian Art and Galleries West, among others. Her research interests tend to revolve around bodily representation, the uncanny, land, and craft.

Frankie May is an active Chinese contemporary artist currently residing in Canada. 

His work spans body performance, experimental photography, and video installations, known for its provocative, confrontational nature, and strong sense of absurdity and humor.

Influenced by Joseph Beuys, Marcel Duchamp, Marina Abramović, and Tehching Hsieh, Frankie also draws inspiration from Dadaism and the Fluxus movement. 

His art explores repressed human emotions and sensory experiences, often using humor and absurdity to challenge social norms and thereby deconstruct inherent mental laziness and ideology.

 Ibrahim Shuaib is a multidisciplinary visual artist hailing from Nigeria, who currently resides on Treaty 1 Territory in Winnipeg. He finds inspiration in the interplay of chaos and tranquility within himself and seeks to simplify the existential questions of life to better understand them and help ease the difficulties of life’s journeys. 

Throughout his artistic career, Ibrahim has explored various forms of self-expression, but has found art to be his most consistent and stable medium. He is constantly experimenting with different techniques and pushing the limits of each medium he works with to create works that are both thought-provoking and aesthetically pleasing. 

Ibrahim’s art often tackles topics that are commonly avoided, using direction and misdirection to convey his messages in a unique and impactful way. 

Loanne II Tran is a new-generation visual artist born in Winnipeg, Canada, now based in Toronto, Canada. They dissect their childhood to grasp an emotional understanding while navigating their queerness, gender, diasporic identity, and role within society. While obtaining a BFA from OCAD University, they co-founded the Shoes Off Collective in 2022. Through their work, Tran examines the complex relationship between identity and society while confronting the difficulty of defining themselves in the Asian diaspora.

Christine De Vuono is a multimedia artist working with drawing, sculpture, collage, installation, and photography. Her work utilizes antiquated practices and mindful labour, emphasizing the disparity between past traditions and present efficiencies. Often focusing on the transitions we face in life, her work celebrates the needs of the psyche for beloved care and lived beauty. Her work has been shown in England, Toronto, Ottawa, Salt Spring Island, in her hometown of Guelph, and in online forums. Currently she teaches in the Fine Art Diploma program at Dundas Valley School of Arts.