Video: Making Intimacy Sovereign and Sovereignty Intimate | An Artist Talk by Wanda Nanibush | Sovereign Intimacies

Plug In ICA was so pleased and honoured to present an artist talk by the prolific writer and curator Wanda Nanibush on Thursday, December 3 at 6pm CT. Her talk entitled, Making Intimacy Sovereign and Sovereignty Intimate, took a personal journey through the nexus of Sovereign/Intimacy, delving into her art practice and filmmaking Nanibush begun the evening with a screening of her short video Arrivals and Departures.

This event was presented as part of Sovereign Intimacies in partnership with Gallery 1C03, with support from Video Pool Media Arts Centre.

Wanda Nanibush is an Anishinaabe-kwe image and word warrior, curator and community organizer from Beausoleil First Nation. Currently Nanibush is the inaugural curator of Indigenous art and co-head of the Indigenous + Canadian Art department at Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). Her current AGO exhibition, Rebecca Belmore: Facing the Monumental is touring internationally as well as two independent projects Nanabozho’s sisters (Dalhousie) and Sovereign Acts (JMB). Nanibush has a Masters of Visual Studies from University of Toronto where she has taught graduate courses. On top of many catalogue essays Nanibush has published widely on Indigenous art, politics, history and feminism and sexuality.

Sovereign Intimacies was a group exhibition co-curated by Nasrin Himada and Jennifer Smith, in partnership with Gallery 1C03, with support from Video Pool Media Arts Centre. The exhibition took place at Plug In ICA from September 26 – December 20, 2020, with extensive programming that consists of online talks, workshops, screenings, and poetry readings. Sovereign Intimacies explored themes of cultural and community exchange between Indigenous artists and artists from the diaspora, more specifically artists who are First Nations, Inuit and Métis collaborating with artists living in what is currently called Canada who came to this land and are not part of the settler/colonial history of the country. The group show consisted of pairings of artists, as well as individuals, whose work is based on process and relationship building, and for those whose work is invested in active conceptualization around topics of friendship and intimacy, who are working to build collective vision of a sovereign future.