Opening Reception | Thursday, June 4, 2026 | 7 – 10PM

Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is elated to announce House on Fire, an exhibition by Sarah Anne Johnson.

House on Fire is the title of a long series of works produced by artist Sarah Anne Johnson. Coming from a deeply personal narrative, House on Fire is the artist’s belated response to a family trauma unearthed and fragmented, but one that she has ultimately reassembled. Johnson’s grandmother, Velma Orlikow, was a victim of psychiatric experiments performed at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal.

The installation, which centres on a dollhouse of secrets, also includes altered family photos, archival newspaper clippings, and small bronze figures of distress. Over time, the project grew from the original installation to include performances created for video.

This iteration of House on Fire is currently presented as a reconsideration of the original installation and an introduction to new works by this remarkable artist.

Plug In ICA would like to thank Michael Nesbitt for making this exhibition possible.

Sarah Anne Johnson is a Winnipeg-born multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans photography, painting, sculpture, video, and performance. She holds a BFA from the University of Manitoba and an MFA from the Yale School of Art. Sarah is the recipient of numerous grants and awards and her work is held in several major permanent collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum. Sarah is best known for her photo-based practice in which she physically and digitally alters large-format prints with oil paint, gold leaf, stickers, and other materials.

Her relationship with nature has remained a consistent subject across her body of work, from her early series of photographs documenting her time as a treeplanter in Northern Canada to her current work that examines the nostalgia we feel for a deeper, wild, more rugged connection with the natural world.