Summer Institute I: Trackings and Trappings
Anju Singh, Justine A. Chambers, and Natalie Purschwitz
July 8 – 19, 2019
Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art hosts Session 1: Trackings and Trappings, which is led by faculty members, Anju Singh, Justine A. Chambers, and Natalie Purschwitz.
Trackings and Trappings explores expanded notions of mapping, encouraging participants to investigate their own practice through the trappings of normalized systems of belief. Participants are invited to reorient their gaze, sensation and attention to gain understanding of how hard-wired ideological structures influence how we chart our trajectories through the experienced world. The first session will run from July 8th to July 19th.
PUBLIC EVENTS:
Thursday, July 11 | 6pm | Delicate Genius | Artist Talk by Anju Singh
Monday, July 15 | 5pm | A Conversation between Justine A. Chambers & Natalie Purschwitz
Wednesday, July 17 | 6pm | Curator Talk by Bopha Chhay
Friday, July 19 | 6pm | Opening Studio & rooftop party
All public events will take place at Plug In ICA
FACULTY:
Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist who privileges what is felt over what is seen. Chambers’ interests are in re-imagining dance performance and activating the dances that are already there – the social choreographies present in the everyday.
Natalie Purschwitz – Through her visual art practice she considers how materials connect with ideological production and quotidian experiences. Her research lies at the intersection of anthropology, mythology, materiality and form.
Anju Singh is a sound artist living and working in Vancouver, BC who uses instruments, objects, and equipment to create pieces and environments that intend to challenge, confuse, or revisit traditional sounds and music in new contexts.
PARTICIPANTS:
benni macdonald is a Canadian artist, curator, and activist practicing in Montréal, Quebec. They have exhibited, performed, and organized across Canada and have been a part of several artist/ curatorial collectives. benni’s artistic practice, research, and advocacy work uses a collaborative approach in working for queer and trans liberation and change in mental health/addictions policy and practice. Recently their installation work, queer coping mechanisms, was shown at the Canadian Harm Reduction Conference (2018) where they co-facilitated a workshop for social service workers working with queer and trans youth who experience challenges due to their drug use and mental health. benni has a bachelor of communications from Macewan University in Edmonton, and is now working on a bachelor of fine arts in studio arts at Concordia University in Montréal.
Davis Plett is an intermedia artist working on Treaty 1 territory. Their work has been shown by Nuit Blanche, Cluster Festival, Carol Shields Festival, Young Lungs Dance Exchange, and Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, with upcoming work at Art Holm 4 and PTE Festival of New Works. They have held residencies at CARTAE Open School, VideoPool Media Arts, and Young Lungs Dance Exchange. Plett’s training spans Pochinko clowning, cultural studies and theatre, typography, expanded cinema, and multimedia design. They also have worked extensively in Winnipeg as a sound designer, composer, and audio programmer. In spring of 2019, Plett will participate in the inaugural English edition of Conversations on Performance at Festival TransAmériques in Montreal, and the 8DaysVII choreography gathering in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia.
Lucas Regazzi (b. 1995). Lives and works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Regazzi received his BFA from Concordia University in 2018. His work has been exhibited in galleries, auctions and publications internationally including Duplex (Vancouver, Canada), Calaboose (Montreal, Canada), Detroit Research (Detroit, USA), the Haunt Journal of Art at the University of California, Irvine (Irvine, USA), Bad Nudes (Montreal, Canada) and Pazmaker (Mexico City, Mexico).
My name is Mahri White and I am a cisgendered queer female artist born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I enjoy long walks on the frozen river and I approach most formal writing opportunities satirically, often in an attempt to soften certain notions of professionalism within academia and the art world. I am currently completing my final semester in the BFA Honours program at the University of Manitoba, and it is here that I have become ever critical of our fine art institutions, what they allow for various queer thought processes and self-exploratory art praxis. My practice is focused primarily in printmaking, textiles, and sculpture, where the outcome of one project will often inspire the other across these mediums. In 2016 I co-directed Gallery 623 in the ArtSpace building, organizing and curating 10 shows by local and national emerging artists.
Marijana Mandusic is a painter and performance artist whose work is focused on embodying feelings of loneliness, isolation and self-exposure. Creating odd looking characters through her paintings and an awkward, often troubled persona in her performances she hopes to bring out the humor in dejected states of being. Marijana completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts (honours) in 2016 and currently lives and works in Winnipeg.
Megan Moore is a Montréal-based media artist. She has exhibited in Canada (2014 Art Souterrain Festival, Espace Projet, FOFA Gallery, Orillia Museum of Art and History) and Europe (Maison de la Photographie, Lille, France, Altes Finanzamt, Berlin, Germany, Ulster Museum, Belfast, UK.) In 2015, she won the Montréal Emerging Photographer award and the Photo Diploma Award first prize in Poznan Poland. Megan holds a BFA in photography from Concordia University, and an MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Guelph.
Nicole Shimonek is an interdisciplinary artist from Winnipeg, Canada. She has an MFA from the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London, and a BFA from the University of Manitoba. She recently was an Artist in Residence at the Banff Centre for Arts, and has participated in numerous residencies and initiatives. Her work has exhibited both nationally and internationally at Plug In ICA, the Syracuse Museum of Art, the Art the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Gallery 1C03 and Urban Ideas Creative Placemaking Challenge. Her videos have screened at the Detroit Museum of New Art, Camden Roundhouse in London, Prairie Scene in Ottawa), Images Festival in Toronto, Studio 303 and the MAI in Montreal, Supermarket Art Fair in Sweden, and WNDX in Winnipeg.
Sabrina Sethi is an emerging curator and writer of Punjabi and Scottish decent. She has recently returned to academia to pursue her MA in Cultural Studies, in the Curatorial Stream. Since returning to Winnipeg, Sabrina has been working with Graffiti Art Programming Inc., first as Gallery Assistant, and subsequently as Gallery Coordinator. She has also recently participated in a BIPOC writer’s workshop series at Ace. Her research interests developed based on her own experiences as a mixed race South Asian/Scottish Canadian, and explores representations of diaspora and cultural production in the West, how that is consumed, presented, and critiqued, as well as exploring concepts of belonging and Othering in Western culture.
Serena Lee’s practice stems from a fascination with polyphony and its radical potential to map power, perception, and belonging. Since 2010, Serena has been a part of the feminist collective Read-in, researching political, embodied, and situated practices of reading through shifting modes and disciplines; and more recently, Serena has been collaborating with artist Christina Battle as SHATTERED MOON ALLIANCE, an ongoing sci-world-building project. Practicing internationally and close to home, recent projects have been realized with transmediale/Embassy of Canada (Berlin), Hanaholmen Cultural Centre (Helsinki), Vtape (Toronto), Blackwood Gallery (Mississauga), Whitechapel Gallery (London), The Research Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, Forest City Gallery (London, ON), Images Festival (Toronto), and Mountain Standard Time (Calgary), among others. Serena holds an MFA from the Piet Zwart Institute (Rotterdam, NL). She is third-generation Chinese-Canadian and was born in Toronto.
Suzie Smith is an artist who works with printmaking and design that expands into sculpture, installation and video. Often her work incorporates acts of deconstruction and transformation and looks back at the process of making itself. She has shown her work across Canada in a number of solo exhibitions and has been included in group exhibitions in Canada, the US and Europe. In addition to her own practice, she is a founding member of Parameter Press, a quarterly risograph art publication delivered by mail.
Toby Gillies is a third-generation visual artist based in Winnipeg. He holds a BFA from the University of Manitoba. Toby’s practice is rooted in experiments in drawing and collage, with frequent forays into digital animation, ceramic, sculpture, public art and social practice. His intuitive approach to art making lends itself nicely to proliferation and collaboration, with seemingly no end to his playful exploration. For nearly a decade, he has been facilitating art experiences in the community, where he serves as Studio Manager of Art City and Artist in Residence at Misericordia Health Centre. He has said that his favourite days are spent making art with older adults in the morning, making art with children in the afternoon, and then working on creative projects of his own in the evening.
Tracy Peters is a Winnipeg-based multidisciplinary artist who examines relationships between organic and human-built environments. She has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and the Winnipeg Arts Council. Peters has attended residencies that include a partnership between Void Gallery and the Social Studios and Gallery in Derry, Northern Ireland, the Deep Bay Residency program in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba, and the ArtCenter/South Florida-MAWA artist exchange program in Miami, Florida. In 2018, Peters participated in the Independent Imaging Retreat (Film Farm) in Mount Forest, Ontario. Her work has exhibited across Canada, in Europe, and Australia.
Our Summer Institute in 2019 were generously supported by the RBC Foundation and Johnston Group.
