Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024

Kapwani Kiwanga, The Length of the Horizon
26.01.24 – 25.08.24 | Copenhagen Contemporary

For her first major exhibition in Scandinavia, the internationally renowned artist Kapwani Kiwanga (b. 1978) explores social mechanisms and power dynamics through large-scale installations of plants, foliage, sand, colour and light. Just below the surface of Kiwanga’s seductively beautiful works lurk critical themes. Plants tell toxic stories of power imbalances, colours have manipulative effects and light is investigated as a political instrument.

The Length of the Horizon presents a delicate flower on a pedestal bathed in a vibrant yellow environment. The vivid yellow alludes not only to the sunlight required for a plant to grow, but also to stereotypical representations of cheerful tropical sunshine. Showcased are Kiwanga’s two paper versions of the peacock flower (Caesalpinia pulcherrima), with its characteristic green leaves, orange-yellow flowers and long, red stamens. Meticulously rendered at two different stages of growth, they reveal the contrasting historical uses of the flower. Reputed to induce abortion, the decorative plant was a means of resistance and self-determination for people living in the conditions of slavery and indigenous populations in Suriname. Beautifully crafted in paper, Kiwanga’s work alludes also to a pastime in Victorian England, where women of means would craft paper flowers, to decorate their homes. Spotlighting this ornamental plant, Kiwanga lays bare the stark contrast in living conditions between women in imperial England and those living in a colonial territory like Suriname.

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Kapwani Kiwanga, Retenue
30 June 2023 - 1 July 2024 | Capc Musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, France | Solo show curated by Sandra Patro

Before the Canadian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale, Kapwani Kiwanga will take over the Great Nave of the musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux for an original project conceived in relation to the history of the place, which in the 19th century was a warehouse for colonial goods and became, in 1973, one of the most emblematic sites for contemporary creation in France and abroad.

For the Capc, this invitation was an obvious one. Kapwani Kiwanga’s practice is rooted both in the creation of temporal and spatial openings to modify ways of seeing and interpreting history, and in a marked interest in minimal forms, which are so present in the institution’s history.

Her work is thus rooted in a plurality of little-known or even invisible histories, and deals with systems of power at the local level, as well as the asymmetries intrinsic to their organisation.

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The Length of the Horizon
16 September 2023 - 1 July 2024 | Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg

Research-based, thematically highly topical, and future-oriented—these terms can be used to describe the impressive work of Kapwani Kiwanga (b. 1978). From September 16, 2023 to January 7, 2024, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg will present the first comprehensive mid-career retrospective of the Canadian and French artist, who has recently received numerous international awards. Kiwanga’s expansive works come together in the exhibition to create a unique aesthetic, insightful, and physical experience.

Kapwani Kiwanga knows how to visually seduce and at the same time touch the content. She uses the power of color, light and material to tell global stories from new perspectives. Delicate ornamental plants harbor toxic power, colors develop manipulative effects and light is exposed as a political instrument. As a studied anthropologist and comparative religion scholar, she has the academic background for her social analytical practice. With her so-called exit strategies, she is looking for a vocabulary to look at existing structures and power relationships from a new perspective and to think about them differently in the future. Her installations, images, sculptures, works on paper, photographs, sound and video works as well as her performative lectures therefore contain a historical-political dimension that only becomes apparent at second glance. Kiwanga breaks down the visual enjoyment of her works in terms of content, intensifies their effect and gives them a lasting impact. In this way it shakes the foundations of our cultural socialization. It refines our sense of “hidden” social mechanisms, structural injustices and global and everyday power asymmetries. In a poetic way, Kapwani Kiwanga misses and expands our social horizons.

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Kapwani Kiwanga: Remediation
7 October 2023 – 7 April 2024 | Solo show curated by November Paynter, Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh | Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Canada

Remediation is the first major survey exhibition in Canada of Canadian-French artist Kapwani Kiwanga. Kiwanga creates installation, sculpture, and performance as well as video and sound pieces to explore the relationships between historical narratives, systems of power, and the use of material within these contexts.

The exhibition is co-organized by Remai Modern and MOCA Toronto.

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KAPWANI KIWANGA: WHERE SALT AND FRESHWATER MEET AND CROOKED TREES FILTER THE SUN
Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art | 24 November 2023 - 02 June 2024

The Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art presents a new exhibition of the Canadian and French artist Kapwani Kiwanga (Hamilton, Canada, 1978), the artist´s first solo exhibition in Portugal. This important exhibition occupies the central room of Serralves Museum and continues the museum´s program of exhibitions by internationally acclaimed artists that explore the unique context of Serralves.

Public Matters
13 May 2023 - 1 October 2023 | Contemporary Art in the Belvedere Garden

'Public Matters. Contemporary Art in the Belvedere Garden', an extensive contemporary sculpture project that complements the Baroque sculpture programme at the Belvedere’s three locations. Curated by Christiane Erharter, Georg Lechner, Sergey Harutoonian, Axel Köhne, Claudia Slanar, Luisa Ziaja

The presentation includes 'The Worlds We Tell: Nammu, Ki and An' by Kapwani Kiwanga. Commissioned by Belvedere Museum to celebrate its 300th Anniversary, this sculpture is part of the Kiwanga's body of works which looks at creation myths and how they are held in different cultural groups.

Here, an oval shape floor sculpture is deftly crafted from wood, ceramic, stone and mirror. The shape resists one particular view point, thus suggesting multiplicity and the intersecting materials provide both a reflection of the sky and the earth in its polished surfaces.

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Kapwani Kiwanga: Remediation
MOCA Toronto | 24 February - 23 July 2023

Remediation focuses on Kiwanga’s most recent research into how humans and the natural environment navigate tensions between toxicity and regeneration.

Kiwanga’s artistic practice has long underscored the importance of nature’s role in determining the course of history — not only through evolution, but through nature’s ever-shifting response to human intervention. Interested in how the earth has been treated in violent, but also remedial ways, by humankind and by natural phenomena, she investigates how these events and their intended outcomes can result in different repercussions.

Kapwani Kiwanga: On Growth
November 2023 – October 2024 | On the High Line at Little West 12th Street

For the High Line, Kiwanga presents On Growth, a sculpture of a fern encased in glass. The multi-faceted case is constructed from dichroic glass, which captures and transforms the light that passes through it, changing tone and color as it’s viewed from different vantage points. The work references Wardian cases, a predecessor of the terrarium, which were used to transport uprooted plants to Europe from overseas, allowing those species to continue to thrive amid London’s polluted air in the late 19th century. These enclosures resembled jewelry cases at the time and, similarly, often protected treasures from distant lands.

Kapwani Kiwanga: Worldmaking – Zurich Art Prize 2022
Museum Haus Konstruktiv | 27 October 2022 - 15 January 2023 curated by Sabine Schaschl

In 2022, the Zurich Art Prize, awarded annually by Museum Haus Konstruktiv and Zurich Insurance Company Ltd, goes to Kapwani Kiwanga (b. 1978 in Hamilton, Canada, lives and works in Paris). This Canadian-French artist is the 15th winner of the renowned award. Endowed with CHF 100,000, the prize consists of an CHF 80,000 budget for the production of a solo exhibition at Museum Haus Konstruktiv and CHF 20,000 in prize money.

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Kapwani Kiwanga at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia
23 April – 27 November 2022

On the occasion of the Biennale Arte 2022, Kapwani Kiwanga showcases her new commissioned piece Terrarium.

The immersive installation takes place in the Arsenale’s Corderie, introducing fluidity into the space through a maze-like environment where vast paintings are mixed with sand-filled glass sculptures. Using 57 metres of the transparent Zulu, curtain textile by Giulio Ridolfo, and 97 metres of Air, curtain textile by Erik Ole Jørgensen, Terrarium presents visitors with a desert sunset palette environment.

The installation imagines sand as a political material: a harmful product of the oil industry, the raw material for glass, and a reminder of an increasingly arid planet. Terrarium is a development on Plot, the site-specific installation the artist created for Haus der Kunst München in 2020.

The installation imagines sand as a political material: a harmful product of the oil industry, the raw material for glass, and a reminder of an increasingly arid planet. Terrarium is a development on Plot, the site-specific installation the artist created for Haus der Kunst München in 2020.

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KAPWANI KIWANGA: OFF-GRID
30 June - 16 October 2022 | New Museum 

This exhibition debuts a newly commissioned body of work that bridges historical research with a site-specific spatial intervention.

Installed in the New Museum’s Fourth Floor gallery, the exhibition debuts a new body of work that bridges historical research with a site-specific spatial intervention. Invoking both the use of police floodlights in targeted urban areas and the early eighteenth-century New York legal codes known as “lantern laws”—ordinances that required all enslaved individuals over the age of fourteen to carry lanterns or lit candles after dark—Kiwanga’s installation continues the artist’s investigation into disciplinary architectures and complex regimes of visibility. Weaving together different layers of opacity and transparency through textile and sculpture, Off-Grid subverts the application of artificial light as a means of control. Instead, the installation is solely illuminated with shifting patterns of natural light. Disconnected from the electric lighting system, the exhibition also stages a type of speculative scenario, evoking both the sudden closure of cultural institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic and a not-so-distant future when museums and society will have to operate with limited access to power.

The central piece in the exhibition is a metallic veil, which has been sprayed with pulverized aluminum obtained by melting down police floodlights. This scrim acts in conjunction with a large wall work nearby, which serves as both a screen and a reflective surface. Also sprayed with the remains of the transformed floodlights, this piece synthesizes the artist’s ongoing interest in revealing social and political contents hidden within materials. Taking a different physical approach, the imposing mass of Maya-Bantu (2019), also on view, is achieved by accumulating layers of sisal, a fiber native to Central America and later cultivated by German settlers in Tanzania, where it became a staple of the local economy both under colonial rule and the country’s early years of independence.

Kapwani Kiwanga: Shady
9 February 2022 – 9 January 2023 | Norval Foundation

Kapwani Kiwanga: Shady is an exciting exhibition on a large scale. The artworks name and semi-transparency also plays upon the politics of visibility and invisibility.

Though the work was created in response to the Canadian context, the themes conveyed by the artwork are easily transferred to the South African context, given their shared history of colonialism and industrial agriculture. Norval Foundation’s atrium provides an impressive space which lies at the architectural heart of the museum. The atrium’s programming is dedicated to large-scale, ambitious installations by mid-career and established artists. As Kiwanga’s first artwork of this scale and completed in 2018, Shady perfectly meets the criteria of the space.

This unique installation makes use of a particular kind of shade cloth, a polyethylene fabric used specifically for agriculture. By filtering out sunlight, this fabric is used to reshape the natural conditions of a particular environment, allowing plants to flourish that would otherwise wither. In this way it recalls the European colonial project, which reshaped indigenous ecosystems into something that was more closely aligned with the ecosystems of the colonial home country.

Kapwani Kiwanga: Plot
Haus der Kunst | 9 October 2020 - 15 May 2021

The seventh edition of the series DER ÖFFENTLICHKEIT – VON DEN FREUNDEN HAUS DER KUNST is dedicated to the Franco-Canadian artist Kapwani Kiwanga (b. 1978 in Hamilton, Canada; lives and works in Paris).

Kiwanga’s practice traces the pervasive impact of power asymmetries by placing historic narratives in dialogue with contemporary realities, the archive, and tomorrow’s possibilities. Her project at Haus der Kunst is conceived of an ever-changing series of artistic interventions and events in three “acts”, staged across the entire run of the installation. In the first act, the museum’s famous Middle Hall is being re-imagined via a series of large semi-transparent curtains, whose gradients of greens and pastels both evoke the neighbouring English Garden, as well as blur the boundaries between the museum’s interior and exterior spaces. This complex environment is further complemented by a series of inflatable sculptures housing both objects and plants, hinting at biological-architectural hybrids, whilst simultaneously referencing historic Victorian-era botanical technologies.

Two subsequent acts will continue and expand upon these interrogations and take the form of an outdoor procession, a series of illuminated sculptures hung along the colonnade of the museum, as well as soft sculptural interventions into the surrounding landscape. Staggered throughout both the spaces of the museum, as well as the run of the installation, these diverse and successive actions will allow for Die Öffentlichkeit to truly open up to the city; posing the question of what it really means to “be public” in the current moment.

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Kapwani Kiwanga: Safe Passage
8 February - 21 April 2019 | MIT List Visual Arts Center

At the core of Safe Passage, Kiwanga’s exhibition at the List Center, is an engagement with racialized surveillance and the power dynamics inherent in seeing and being seen. Kiwanga follows the lineage of surveillance and positions it in relation to blackness in America, from its roots in slavery to the role that technology performs today. Safe Passage presents four recent interconnected bodies of work that address the history of forced visibility, strategic concealment, and networks of resistance.

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Kapwani Kiwanga studied Anthropology and Comparative Religion at McGill University, Canada. She has presented solo exhibitions at The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada; La Ferme de Buisson, Noisiel, France; South London Gallery, London, UK; and the Jeu de Paume, Paris, France. Recent group exhibitions include the Hammer Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles; EVA Biennial, Limerick; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; SALT, Istanbul; and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon. In 2018 she was the subject of a solo exhibition, A wall is just a wall (and nothing more at all) organized by the Esker Foundation, Calgary.  She is the receipient of the 2018 Sobey Art Award.

Kapwani Kiwanga: Safe Passage is organized by Yuri Stone, Assistant Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center.

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