Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years

Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years brought together over 30 Indigenous artists from across Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, whose works collectively imagine futures in provocative ways, from their own diverse perspectives and practices. Spread over multiple sites across the City of Winnipeg, incorporating many significant partnerships across the city, Close Encounters was at the time (2010) among the largest exhibitions of contemporary Indigenous are undertaken on a local, national, or even international scale.

Winnipeg is home to one of the largest per capita urban populations of Indigenous people in Canada, and as such the dynamic of being an Indigenous city has a profound impact on the city’s past, present and future. Through its history of cultural encounter between Indigenous peoples, and later European newcomers, the city remains an important site of creative exchange.

The impact of the exhibition and related workshops, panels, critical dialogues, community-based residencies, and other discursive activities, was widespread and the discussions raised regarding Indigenous people at a pivotal point in time was urgent and necessary. A 300-page publication was produced to document the project.

Close Encounters asked us to shift our perspectives of Indigenous art to the future and to take this opportunity to look into the next 500 years of culture together.

Curatorial collective: Candice Hopkins, Steve Loft, Lee-Ann Martin and Jenny Western; Project Manager: Liz Barron; Plug In ICA Artistic Director: Anthony Kiendl; publication editor Sherry Farrell-Racette. Funding was provided through a generous cultural capital grant from the Winnipeg Arts Council, with the concept for this project encouraged by Arts Council Director Carol Phillips.

Above image: Jonathan Jones, untitled (infinity), 2011, photo courtesy Plug In ICA, Collection of Winnipeg Art Gallery.