One eye filled with night
October 23, 2026 – January 9, 2027
Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art
Winnipeg, Manitoba
www.plugin.org
Inspired by Sarah Ahmed’s ‘Queer Phenomenology’, Lewis locates her interest in how domestic spaces and objects shape queer identities. The compositions depict 2SLGBTQIA+ friends in their personal and familiar spaces layered with heady references to film noir, photography, and historical paintings. Often working at an experiential scale, these works solicit viewers to project themselves into the tableaux and join in the dramatic, intimate scenescapes. Lewis creates an affective vision of environment and objecthood, where she explores dualities like desire/disgust and bliss/anguish through various painterly strategies. Borrowing narrative devices from filmic traditions, non-figurative works, or “object scenes,” as Lewis refers to them, are companions to the portraits, revelatory clues to understanding this environment and its constituents.
Find out more here.
[Image: Laura Lewis, ‘Fade Into Blue’, 2025. Oil on canvas, 60 x 72 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.]
