The world is changing. Now is the moment to reconfigure our notions of time to reveal alternative ways of thinking and being for the future. In Close Encounters, Indigenous artists imagine the future within the context of present experiences and past histories. By radically reconsidering encounter narratives between native and non-native people, Indigenous prophecies, possible utopias and apocalypses, this exhibition proposes intriguing possibilities for the next 500 years. “We all in different measure have carved out the future,” observes Hopi photographer and filmmaker, Victor Masayesva, in his book Husk of Time. “We are all clairvoyants, soothsayers, prophets, knowingly assuming our predictions.”

Close Encounters brings together over 30 Indigenous artists from across Canada, the United States, South America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, including newly commissioned work from Rebecca Belmore, Faye HeavyShield, Kent Monkman, and Edward Poitras. Close Encounters showcases artists and artworks that collectively invent provocative futures from a diversity of perspectives and practices.

At the WAG

The WAG’s portion of the exhibition will consist of a selection of prints and drawings by Shuvinai Ashoona and Pudlo Pudlat. Pudlat is described as the “first Inuit modernist,” and representations of new technologies frequently occur in his prints and drawings. Pudlat was particularly interested in documenting the rapidly changing North, and his reflections on the encounters between nature and technology create a world in which the everyday takes on the extraordinary. Shuvinai’s drawings sometimes explore the fantastical, with intricately rendered rock formations that take on the shape of animals.

Also at the WAG will be a commissioned work by Faye HeavyShield comprised of folded paper arrowheads taken from digital images of the Assiniboine and Red River. These elements will be woven together like a grid using fishing line formed into a banner shape. The banner will suspend from the Eckhardt Hall ceiling.

The exhibition takes place at Close Encounters exhibition site, 109 Pacific Ave. • Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, 460 Portage Ave. • Manitoba Hydro Head Office Lobby, 360 Portage Ave. • Winnipeg Art Gallery.

Close Encounters is being presented as part of the Winnipeg Cultural Capital of Canada 2010 ARTS FOR ALL program. Throughout 2010 (and into 2011) free-large scale events and community based programs will continue to bring the arts into the lives of all Winnipeggers. Close Encounters helps realize of the ARTS FOR ALL vision by providing a massive multi-site exhibition of groundbreaking work free of charge to the public, and by providing a platform to present work by leading Aboriginal artists.