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A Talk with Trevor Paglen co-presented with The University of Manitoba | January 15, 2026, 7PM

2026

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Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art

Unit 1, 460 Portage Avenue
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Canada
R3C 0E8

info@plugin.org

1.204.942.1043

Wheelchair accessible. Please contact us if you have any accessibility needs or requests.

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.

PLUG IN ICA ON INSTAGRAM

Employment opportunity 📨 As of January 21, 20

Employment opportunity 📨

As of January 21, 2026, Plug In ICA is conducting a new search for a recognized leader in contemporary art to build on its legacy, and serve as its Executive Director/Curator. This is your opportunity to have an indelible impact.

The Executive Director/Curator will provide visionary leadership to Plug In ICA, overseeing its artistic programming and strategic direction. This role involves curatorial expertise, team management, community engagement, and financial oversight to maintain the institution’s position as a leader in contemporary art.

To apply, please email your cover letter and CV to board@plugin.org with the subject heading “Search Committee.” Applications must be submitted by midnight (12:00, Central Time), February 27, 2026.

All applicants must be a Canadian citizen or have obtained a permit to work in Canada.

Plug In ICA is committed to fostering an inclusive workplace culture. We encourage applications from candidates who identify as members of equity-deserving groups, including but not limited to women, Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, racialized persons, and individuals within the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.

We strive to create a barrier-free hiring process and welcome accommodation requests during recruitment and selection.

A full job call can be found on our website through the 🖇️ link in our bio

Currently in our bookstore: Border Crossings Issue

Currently in our bookstore: Border Crossings Issue 169: Now, and Then

““Now, and Then” is a nice elliptical phrase, never standing on its own — inconclusive in an expansive kind of way. It can be read to mean “occasionally,” as in — now and then I have a craving for raw oysters. It can be understood comparatively: this is now and that was then or it can be read as a double state of mind, considering what we are doing now and what took place then. This is the way in which our topic for the current issue came to mind. It might also serve as an anchor in our rudderless time, to be consistently nautical, in that we can be engaged in the unavoidable present but we can also be assured that there is a history behind us — both bolstering, and dreadful, some of it we can draw and build on and much for which we ask to be forgiven...”
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Find this book in our bookstore through the link in our bio
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#BorderCrossingsIssue169
#NowandThen
#pluginicabookstore

👋 Thank you to everyone who made time to visit

👋 Thank you to everyone who made time to visit us over the course of 2025! Friendly reminder, our galleries are currently closed between exhibitions. Our offices, library and bookstore remain open Monday - Friday, 10AM - 6PM.

Please join us at 7PM on January 15 for Trevor Paglen's talk, 'The Lizard People:
How UFOs, Magic, and Mind-Control Explain Visual Culture in the Age of AI' presented by the University of Manitoba.

This talk would not be possible without the generous support of University of Manitoba’s Strategic Initiatives Support Fund (SISF), UM Faculty of Arts, UM School of Art, UM Faculty of Architecture and Plug In ICA.

Trevor Paglen's talk will be hosted at Plug In ICA, 1-460 Portage Ave ✨

🎆 Happy new year from Plug In ICA! In collabora

🎆 Happy new year from Plug In ICA! In collaboration with The University of Manitoba, we invite you to join us on January 15, 2026 at 7PM for a special talk presented by artist Trevor Paglen, with a reception to follow.

Something strange has happened to the world of images. In the era of algorithmic feeds, generative excess, and the attention economy, images have ceased to represent. Instead, they activate. Images have become synthetic stimuli, engineered to provoke targeted perceptual, emotional, and behavioral responses in both humans and machines. They’ve become highly refined mind-altering substances. 'The Lizard People: How UFOs, Magic, and Mind-Control Explain Visual Culture in the Age of AI' traces a genealogy of this shift, linking Cold War mind-control experiments and military Psyops with stage magic, UFO mythologies, and contemporary neuro-AI research to expose the deep mechanisms shaping today’s visual culture.

Trevor Paglen’s work occupies a singular place at the intersection of contemporary art, technology, surveillance and critical inquiry. Paglen has launched an artwork into distant orbit around Earth in collaboration with Creative Time and MIT, contributed research and cinematography to the Academy Award-winning film Citizenfour, and created a radioactive public sculpture for the exclusion zone in Fukushima, Japan.

His exhibitions at major institutions worldwide, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Tate Modern and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, have cemented him as one of the most important artists working today on questions of AI, vision and power.

This talk would not be possible without the generous support of University of Manitoba’s Strategic Initiatives Support Fund (SISF), UM Faculty of Arts, UM School of Art, UM Faculty of Architecture and Plug In ICA.

Currently in our bookstore: The Camera is Cruel: M

Currently in our bookstore: The Camera is Cruel: Model Arbus Goldin

"Published by VERLAG FüR MODERNE KUNST

Edited by Daniel Jelitzka, Gerald A. Matt. Preface by Peter Coeln, Daniel Jelitzka, Roland Jörg. Text by Astrid Mahler, Gerald A. Matt, Franziska Mecklenburg, Rebekka Reuter.

Hardcover, 8.5 x 11.25 inches, 132 pages, 28 colour, 17 bw.

A selection of works by three female American photographers—Lisette Model (1901–1983), Diane Arbus (1923–1971) and Nan Goldin (born 1953)—are compiled in this publication. These photographers recorded the social life of America in the 20th century, particularly those living on the margins of society."
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Find this book in our bookdtore through the link in our bio
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#TheCameraIsCruel
#ModelArbusGoldin
#pluginicabookstore

Back in stock at our bookstore: Bitter Melanin by

Back in stock at our bookstore: Bitter Melanin by Andi Vicente

"This collection started as a zine series that stemmed from wanting to put together pivotal moments of warmth and endearment and pain of a particular diasporic narrative. The first one highlights anxieties around identity. The second looks at migration pathways and challenges. The third encompasses the return of the self through contributions from the Filipino diaspora. Now compiled together with the addition of a forth which focuses on strengthening relationships and reimagining futures."
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Find this book in our bookstore through the link in our bio
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#BitterMelanin
#AndiVicente
#pluginicabookstore

👀 A look in our archives! Check out this photo

❄️ Happy holidays! ❄️ From December 22 to

❄️ Happy holidays! ❄️

From December 22 to January 2, our galleries and offices will be closed. We will open again, Saturday, January 3rd from 12PM - 5PM. Please join us for an artist walkthrough led by Leesa Streifler that day at 1PM. This will also be the last day to see our current exhibition, 'The Performance of Being', a Leesa Streifler retrospective.

Thank you to everyone who joined us throughout this past year, we look forward to welcoming you all back in 2026!

We would like to wish everyone a warm and bright holiday season ✨

❤️, Plug In ICA

🎆 Planning ahead for 2026? Make sure to join us

🎆 Planning ahead for 2026? Make sure to join us on January 3 at 1PM for an artist walkthrough led by Leesa Streifler. This will be the last day to visit 'The Performance of Being' a Leesa Streifler retrospective, so you won't want to miss this!

A retrospective survey of the work of one of Canada’s leading feminist artists over the course of her 40-year career. The exhibition explores Streifler’s sustained interest in the representation, performance and politics of “Othered”, marginalized, and non-conforming bodies. Drawing on her own lived experience and informed by feminist theory, her powerful, emotionally-charged, and expressive works present figures that defy social conventions, behavioural ‘norms’ and traditional gender roles to engage in critical discourse on body-image, sexuality, agency, performativity, relationships, motherhood, illness and aging. Drawn from public and private collections nationwide, this survey brings together over one hundred works in drawing, painting, mixed media, photography and installation, exemplifying the significant contributions of Streifler’s critically-acclaimed practice towards feminist art in Canada.

This exhibition is curated by Wayne Baerwaldt & Jennifer McRorie. It is organized by the Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery in partnership with the Nickle Galleries (Calgary, AB), Art Gallery of Swift Current (Swift Current, SK) and Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba (Brandon, MB).

Plug In ICA acknowledges the funding support provided by the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage Museum Assistance Program, the City of Moose Jaw, SK Arts, Government of Saskatchewan, SaskCulture, Saskatchewan Lotteries and Canada Council for the Arts. Support for the exhibition is provided by the National Gallery of Canada.

Read Leesa's bio below ⬇

📸: ‘The Performance of Being’ installation view at Plug In ICA, 2025. Photo courtesy of Karen Asher.

Currently in our bookstore: Old Gold by Kara Hamil

Currently in our bookstore: Old Gold by Kara Hamilton

“Old Gold
2016
Catalogue with text by Angie Keefer and design by David Reinfurt

"You observe that the walls are made entirely of multihued amber pieces flattened and melted together like used chewing gum, though each piece has been carefully modeled to resemble the leaf of a ginkgo tree, or a fish scale—elegant and repulsive, at once. A few feet away from where you’re standing, a small, filigreed table is attached to the corner of the room, poised there on a single, turned leg like a prostitute amputee. The table holds a reluctant clock face buried among black and gilt leaves. Time passes through it like liquid squeezed back and forth inside a balloon.

Several ornate frames built into wall panels line the room. Some contain additional, inset frames and swags topped by regal crowns and supported by mythological figures, chariots, soldiers, swords, voluptuous amphibians, and papery flowers, every mechanical and anatomical detail sculpted in amber. The frame directly in front of you surrounds a Florentine mosaic assembled from quartz, jade, onyx, and other stones, one of four pictures that punctuate the room like clear eyes in a world-worn face. Each depicts a different sensory perception, except this one, which doubles as an allegory of touch and smell. Two couples frolic among classical ruins. One companion strokes another’s face. A third holds a flower under a fourth’s nose."

Angie Keefer”
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Find this book in our bookstore through the link in our bio
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#OldGold
#KaraHamilton
#pluginicabookstore

📣 We are now accepting applications for our 202

📣 We are now accepting applications for our 2026 Winter Institute, Too Two Spirited for You - Unsettling Two Spirited/Indigiqueer art in Canada.

This year's iteration of the Winter Institute will be led by Adrian Stimson and take place from February 9 - 20, 2026 ❄️

The 2026 Winter Institute, will consist of the gathering of TS/IQ artists to explore the past, present and future of TS/IQ art in Canada. Through individual artistic practice and together as a group we will deploy artistic and critical discourse to focus and map Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer resilience past, present and future with individual or group works addressing power, representation, sexuality, language, body, tradition, memory, colonial narratives and knowledge sharing.

Participants can expect an open-minded space where ideas, conversation and developing art works are explored critically. The hope is to create a safe space for exploring and sharing, removing the pressure to produce a final product, allowing for focused contemplation and research within an empathic yet holistic space that can translate to artistic endeavours and understandings for all of society.

Adrian Stimson is a member of the Siksika Nation. He holds a BFA from the Alberta University for the Arts, and a MFA from the University of Saskatchewan. Stimson is an interdisciplinary artist exhibiting nationally, internationally with several Public Art Projects. Among many awards, he has received the Governor General Award for Visual and Media Arts in 2018. Stimson is the current Chair of the Board of Governors Alberta University of the Arts.

Plug In ICA’s Winter Institute is part of its educational programs open to artists, writers, thinkers and various cultural workers from all backgrounds. It is a critical pedagogical context for communal learning, collaboration, and exchange.

There is NO FEE to apply or participate in the Winter Institute but participants will be responsible for their own travel and accommodations while in Winnipeg.

Applications are due by 5PM CDT January 10, 2026.

Click the 🔗 link in our bio for more information and to apply!

📸 : Image courtesy of the artist

#winterinstitute2026

🌙 We're open late tonight! Visit our current ex

🌙 We're open late tonight! Visit our current exhibition, 'The Performance of Being', a Leesa Streifler retrospective, open until 8PM tonight!

We will be hosting an artist walkthrough of the exhibition at 1PM on January 3, 2026, come by and learn more about the exhibition! 🖼️

A retrospective survey of the work of one of Canada’s leading feminist artists over the course of her 40-year career. The exhibition explores Streifler’s sustained interest in the representation, performance and politics of “Othered”, marginalized, and non-conforming bodies. Drawing on her own lived experience and informed by feminist theory, her powerful, emotionally-charged, and expressive works present figures that defy social conventions, behavioural ‘norms’ and traditional gender roles to engage in critical discourse on body-image, sexuality, agency, performativity, relationships, motherhood, illness and aging. Drawn from public and private collections nationwide, this survey brings together over one hundred works in drawing, painting, mixed media, photography and installation, exemplifying the significant contributions of Streifler’s critically-acclaimed practice towards feminist art in Canada.

This exhibition is curated by Wayne Baerwaldt & Jennifer McRorie. It is organized by the Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery in partnership with the Nickle Galleries (Calgary, AB), Art Gallery of Swift Current (Swift Current, SK) and Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba (Brandon, MB).

Plug In ICA acknowledges the funding support provided by the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage Museum Assistance Program, the City of Moose Jaw, SK Arts, Government of Saskatchewan, SaskCulture, Saskatchewan Lotteries and Canada Council for the Arts. Support for the exhibition is provided by the National Gallery of Canada.

📸: ‘The Performance of Being’ installation view at Plug In ICA, 2025. Photo courtesy of Karen Asher.

Artist bio below ⬇️

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THANK YOU FOR YOUR OPERATIONAL SUPPORT

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PROGRAM SUPPORT

Hours

Plug In ICA Gallery and Art Book Shop
*please note that we are closed between exhibitions

Sundays & Mondays: Closed
 Tuesdays & Wednesdays: Noon to 6 pm
 Thursdays: Noon to 8 pm
 Fridays: Noon to 6 pm
 Saturdays: Noon to 5 pm

Closed
Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day, Louis Riel Day, Easter Friday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Civic Holiday, Labour Day, Thanksgiving Day, Remembrance Day

Office
 Monday to Friday: 10 am to 5 pm

Library and Research Centre
 Open during gallery hours.
Please call for appointment between exhibitions: (204) 942-1043

Paid parking available on-site and nearby.
Free admission.