Image: Winnipeg Art Gallery
The Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG)-Qaumajuq will open 'Terra Cognita/Incognita' on August 19, presenting more than 125 artworks from its permanent collection in an exhibition that examines how land has been represented, imagined, and understood across cultures and time. The show is scheduled to open during WAG Wednesday Nights, with a free celebration and live performance by cellist Leanne Zacharias.
Curated by Dr. Riva Symko, WAG-Qaumajuq’s Head of Collections and Exhibitions, the exhibition takes its title from Latin for “known land/unknown land.” According to the gallery, it considers land not only as physical space, but also as a source of identity, meaning, memory, and connection. The exhibition brings together historical and contemporary works and seeks to place differing perspectives in conversation around how people relate to landscape.
The checklist includes works by artists associated with the Group of Seven, including A.Y. Jackson, Lawren S. Harris, and Tom Thomson, alongside Canadian artists such as Carl Beam, Eleanor Bond, Emily Carr, Sarah Anne Johnson, and Norval Morrisseau. The exhibition also includes photographs by Edward Burtynsky and André Kertész. In addition to collection works, 'Terra Cognita/Incognita' features loaned pieces by four local contemporary artists: Anna Binta Diallo, Sarah Fuller, Debra Frances Plett, and Lourdes Still, who is creating a new commission for the show.
WAG-Qaumajuq says the exhibition addresses landscape through Indigenous, Inuit, and settler Canadian perspectives, and also looks at the changing vulnerability of land in the face of climate change. The gallery describes the project as part of a revamp of its permanent collection galleries, with the aim of showing old favourites and rarely seen works in new ways.
The exhibition’s design and installation were also developed with environmental impact in mind. WAG-Qaumajuq says its teams worked with Martha Street Studio and The Travelling Sign Painters to source more sustainable alternatives to wallpaper and information panels, and partnered with Alpha Masonry to use repurposed Manitoba Tyndall stone for display cases. The gallery also says it reduced the use of disposables and plastics in the production of the show.
A free opening celebration for 'Terra Cognita/Incognita' is set for August 19 at 7 pm during WAG Wednesday Nights, with support noted from Leon A. Brown, for its Sounds of Manitoba sponsorship in honour of Ruth Anne Shnier, and from Power Corporation of Canada. The exhibition opens at Winnipeg Art Gallery - WAG-Qaumajuq in Winnipeg, Canada, on August 19.
