Summer Institute I: Slow Wonderings
Maggie Groat and Crystal Mowry
August 7-19, 2023
Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is delighted to announce this year’s iteration of our Summer Institute Program. Starting August 7 through August 19, 2023, artist Maggie Groat and curator, Crystal Mowry will be co-leading the two week program. We are seeking interested participants to join this session of the Summer Institute Program. Each year, for the two-week span, the Summer Institute Program serves as a forum that commiserates a cohort of artists, writers, thinkers, and various cultural professionals. Together with faculty leads, they exchange critical perspectives, engage in seminar circles, presentations, and workshopping exercises. Moreover, participants are provided space for studio work within our galleries or research activities through our library. Some versions of the Summer Institute have taken the form of field research or offsite, land-based learning. This year the faculty leaders will work together through their respective cultural practices to guide participants through a collaborative inquiry-based learning and sharing program. On the final day of the program, there will be an open studio, or reading presentation, or performance night open to the general public.
PUBLIC EVENTS:
Saturday, August 19 | 6 – 9pm | Open Studios
All public events will take place at Plug In ICA.
Crystal Mowry (she/her) is a curator and collaborator based in Treaty 4 (Regina). Her work often explores the tension between perceived authenticity and troubled forms of representation. As a curator operating primarily within the context of a public art museum, she treats her role as equal parts co-conspirator and translator, often seeking ways to support artists in the development of new, site-responsive projects. Her curatorial work includes group exhibitions such as The Brain is wider than the Sky, I’ll be your Mirror, The Perennials, What the Bat Knows, and Romancing the Anthropocene, one of the three zones commissioned by the City of Toronto for its annual Nuit Blanche event. Her solo projects with artists Maggie Groat, Ernest Daetwyler, and Deanna Bowen have received Exhibition of the Year Awards from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries (now Galleries Ontario Galeries). Her writing has appeared in various artist-focused publications on the work of internationally active artists Shary Boyle, Brendan Fernandes, and August Clintberg. Mowry held the position of Senior Curator at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery where she oversaw the gallery’s exhibitions, collections, and publishing activities for over a decade. She currently holds the position of Director of Programs at the MacKenzie Art Gallery.
Maggie Groat is a visual artist who makes images and objects from found and salvaged materials. Her work considers the utility of images, possibilities of alternative archives, and the transformative, ritual potential of reuse, while living in times of climate emergency. Her methodologies are informed by states of being in-between, intuition, acts of care, responsiveness, decolonization, Indigenous Futurism, strategies of collage, and hopeful speculation. Many of Groat’s recent projects, including STSTS (Western Front, Vancouver), Deep time, portals, particles & pulls (Armory Street, Toronto), flowers also gardens, gardens also seeds (AKA, Saskatoon) and The Future is Dark…I think (La Datcha, Project Space Festival, Berlin), engage with public space through considering researched based, deep time approaches to working site-specifically. She has taught at Emily Carr University, Algoma University, and in the role of Lecturer and Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto.
Acknowledgements
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 Nations.
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 would like to The Winnipeg Foundation for their ongoing support of Plug In ICA.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, 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 plugin.org/support or by contacting Caitlinn Thomas-Dunn at caitlin@plugin.org.
For more information about our programming, contact Luther Konadu at luther@plugin.org.
For general information, please contact: info@plugin.org or call 1.204.942.1043.