On May 9, 2024, the MacKenzie Art Gallery is launching an interactive online exhibition led by a rebellious AI Chatbot, Wake Windows: The Witching Hour. Curated by Rea McNamara, this digital exhibition explores how the labour and care of young children can be generative for digital literacy and collaborative action in a choose-your-own-adventure style game populated with new and expanded works by contemporary digital artists from across the world. From animations to machinimas and virtual reality (VR), this digital exhibition centres maternal worldbuilding, aiming to bring to light the missing datasets in our collective understanding of the often invisible labour of mothering. 

With pieces by Claudia Cornwall, Alejandra Higuera with Magnolia Higuera, Faith Holland with Ben Bogart and Hildegard Holland Watter, Wednesday Kim, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Rory Scott, Skawennati, and Rodell Warner, Wake Windows examines how these artists’ work has shifted since taking on new care-work responsibilities as parents, caregivers, or educators.  

Wake Windows is the third and final installment in the Gallery’s experimental digital exhibition series—a series designed to provide live, practical, and conceptual testing alongside the development of the MacKenzie Art Gallery’s Digital Exhibitions Toolkit and Art Installation Launcher (DETAIL). Conceptualized by Digital Exhibitions Consultants Cat Bluemke and Jonathan Carroll and funded by the Canada Council for the Art’s Digital Strategy Fund, DETAIL is an in-development collection of resources for creating a new field of art exhibitions for digital platforms. 

“The interactive narrative format of Wake Windows is an exciting new kind of digital exhibition experience for the Gallery and our audiences alike,” states Digital Exhibition Consultant Jonathan Carroll. “This exhibit ‘plays’ like the choose-your-own-adventure books of childhood, with a different story emerging through audience choices. Although playful in nature, the exhibit deals with pressing contemporary issues around artificial intelligence and caregiving. The exhibit rewards repeat visitors—some choices become available only at certain times of day. As the third and final project in the DETAIL exhibition series, we’re thrilled to give audiences a journey outside the virtual white cube through Wake Windows!” 

The DETAIL initiative seeks to redefine the possibilities of digital platforms for showcasing artistic expression. Following the launch of Wake Windows, DETAIL will undergo its final stage of refinement before being launched as Open-Source tools for the digital arts community in support of further exploration of new territory in immersive and thought-provoking digital art experiences. 

 

ONLINE OPENING 

There will be a virtual opening of Wake Windows: The Witching Hour on May 9, 2024, from 4–5 PM CST. The event will be livestreamed to the MacKenzie Art Gallery’s Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch accounts.

 

ABOUT THE CURATOR   

Rea McNamara is a writer and curator based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Her curatorial work has long been shaped by networked counterpublics’ participatory cultures, particularly the collaborative processes of transformative fandom, alongside a social practice shaped by organizing community-based art initiatives. In her research, she often focuses on the emergence of otherness and hybridity within digital identity formations, informing an on/offline curatorial approach that connects and capacity-builds. 

McNamara has previously held curatorial and public programming positions with the Gardiner Museum and Drake Hotel and been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. She has curated and organized a range of exhibitions and public projects, including dis-ease (Vector Festival, 2021), Obsessive Pop Tendencies (Pleasure Dome, 2019), Community Arts Space (Gardiner Museum, 2016-2019), and Safe Space (Scotiabank Nuit Blanche 2024). In 2011, she founded the art party series Sheroes, which engaged with female celebrity fandom through music, performance, installation, and internet-based art. Her work has been presented at The Art Gallery of Ontario and is in the Whitney Museum of American Art collection. 

Additionally, McNamara has written about art, culture and the internet for frieze, Art in America, The Globe and Mail, and been commissioned to write exhibition texts for Trinity Square Video, the Remai Modern, and Daniel Faria Gallery. From 2020-2021, she was the Emily H. Tremaine Journalism Fellow for Curators with Hyperallergic. She also gives talks, moderates panels, and lead workshops on fandom, curatorial practice, and the labour of mothering for The Toronto Public Library, Toronto Metropolitan University, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and more. 

  

ABOUT THE MACKENZIE ART GALLERY

The MacKenzie Art Gallery is Saskatchewan’s oldest public art gallery, and is committed to creating transformative experiences of the world through art. With a permanent collection that spans 5,000 years and nearly 5,000 works of art, we encompass both the University of Regina’s vast collection and one of Canada’s largest collections of Indigenous art, the Kampelmacher Memorial Collection. Through art, education, and immersive programming, the MacKenzie brings fresh perspectives that transform how people experience history, themselves, and each other.    

 The MacKenzie is located in Wascana Park, Oskana Kâ’asastêki in Treaty Four territory, the traditional—and contemporary—territory of the Nehiyawak, Saulteaux, Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota people, and the homeland of the Métis Nation. We are grateful for the support of the Mackenzie Art Gallery Operating Endowment Fund at the South Saskatchewan Community Foundation, as well as the support of our core funders: the Canada Council for the Arts; SaskCulture; the City of Regina; the University of Regina; and the Saskatchewan Arts Board. 

 

MEDIA CONTACT 
Angela Lackey 
Communications Coordinator 
MacKenzie Art Gallery 
alackey@mackenzie.art
(306)-584-4250 4271

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