My Winnipeg

Curators: Paula Aisemberg, Sigrid Dahle, Hervé di Rosa, Noam Gonick, Anthony Kiendl

At la maison rouge, Paris, France
June 23 to September 25, 2011

At MIAM (Musée International des Arts Modestes), Sète, France
November 5, 2011 to May 20, 2012

Co-organized by Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, la maison rouge, MIAM, with support from Gallery One One One at the School of Art, University of Manitoba and the National Arts Centre

My Winnipeg is an exhibition project featuring over 70 artists from (or with a connection to) Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Instigated by French artist Hervé di Rosa, with support from Antoine de Galbert and Paula Aisemberg at la Maison Rouge, Plug In ICA and Anthony Kiendl were engaged as the Canadian partner institution.

Spanning decades and genres, including archival material, this contemporary art exhibition explores Winnipeg as a mytho-poetic territory of reverie, catastrophe, carnal desire, and (sub)conscious inspiration. In form and materials these works are variously dream-like, narrative-based, representational, and vernacular. Through this lens, the exhibition depicts a landscape that appears alternately somnambulant, panic-ridden, disquieting and homely. Nevertheless, these captivating works inspire fascination, obsession and desire. One may begin to understand a city that is breathtakingly beautiful, and grounded in a revolutionary past. My Winnipeg, taking its name from Guy Maddin’s award-winning film, forms subjective impressions of this mid-sized prairie capitol – versions of Winnipeg that mingle truth with fiction, history and speculation. Some of Winnipeg’s best-known artists—for example, Maddin, Marcel Dzama, and Diana Thorneycroft— have rarely exhibited together before, but arguably share these sensibilities. One may trace their practices to artistic predecessors – Winnipeg’s 20th century practitioners of “prairie surrealism.”

As a psycho-geographic territory including the birthplace of the Métis nation and the province’s forefather Louis Riel, the 1919 General Strike, the childhood home of Neil Young and of Marshall McLuhan, and the original headquarters for Harlequin Romance novels – “Winnipeg” nevertheless resists idealization as it is by equal turns the coldest city on the planet and plagued by floods, fires, racism and child poverty. Winnipeg is also the birthplace of the Professional Native Artist’s Inc., a radical collective of Indigenous artists that led to Indigenous self-determination in the arts, and the visionary Woodlands School of painting.

My Winnipeg exhibition artists: Ed Ackerman, KC Adams, Sharon Alward, C. Graham Asmundson, Louis Bakó, Daniel Barrow, H. Eric Bergman, Jackson Beardy, Eleanor Bond, Border Crossings Study Centre, Shary Boyle, AA Bronson, Joanne Bristol, Paul Butler, Shawna Dempsey & Lorri Millan, Dan Donaldson, Michael Dumontier, Aganetha Dyck, Marcel Dzama, William Eakin, Cliff Eyland, Ivan Eyre, Erica Eyres, Neil Farber, Rosalie Favell, Christine Fellows, Lionel Lemoine Fitzgerald, Karel Funk, Jeff Funnell, Tim Gardener, General Idea, Larry Glawson, Noam Gonick, Gilles Hébert, Robert Houle, Simon Hughes, Imagetaker, Alex Janvier, Sarah Anne Johnson, Krisjanis Kaktins-Gorsline, Wanda Koop, Jake Kosciuk, Rob Kovitz, Guy Maddin, Kavavow Mannomee, Bonnie Marin, Doug Melnyk, Bernie Miller, Kent Monkman, Shaun Morin / The Slomotion, Darryl Nepinak, Daphne Odjig, Robert Pasternak, Linda Pearce, Hope Peterson, Alex Poruchnyk & Vern Hume, Don Proch, Jon Pylypchuk, Carl Ray, Paul Robles, Mélanie Rocan, Royal Art Lodge, Colleen Simard, Craig Alun Smith, Kevin B. C. Stafford, Lionel Stephenson, Diana Thorneycroft, Andrew Valko, Jordan Van Sewell, Andrew Wall, Esther Warkov, Gord Wilding, Adrian Williams, Richard Williams, Sharron Zenith Corne.

My Winnipeg is accompanied by a full-colour, bilingual publication featuring over 70 artists, illustrating over 200 works of art. It features writing by Sigrid Dahle, Robert Enright, Noam Gonick, Anthony Kiendl, Cathy Mattes and  Meeka Walsh. The catalogue is published as a travel guide, and also features maps, listings, and significant recommendations and addresses for visiting Winnipeg. Full colour, 248 pages. My Winnipeg is co-published by Fage, la maison rouge, MIAM and Plug In Editions. It is available in Canada through Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art/Plug In Editions.