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Kapwani Kiwanga

Biography, Selected Exhibitions, Artworks and Selected Press

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Biography

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kapwani Kiwanga (b. 1978, Hamilton, Ontario) is a Canadian and French artist based in Paris.

She studied anthropology and comparative religion at McGill University in Montreal, art at l’école des Beaux-Arts de Paris and at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains in Tourcoing.

In 2022, Kiwanga received the Zurich Art Prize (CH). She was also the winner of the Marcel Duchamp Prize (FR) in 2020, Frieze Artist Award (USA) and the Sobey Art Award (CA) in 2018.

Solo exhibitions have been shown at the Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich; New Museum, New York; State of Concept, Athens; Moody Center for the Arts, Houston; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel/Bienne; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (USA); Esker Foundation, Calgary; Power Plant, Toronto; Logan Center for the Arts, Chicago; South London Gallery, London, and Jeu de Paume, Paris, among others.

Selected Solo Exhibitions 

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2024
Kapwani Kiwanga, Canadian Pavilion, International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (IT)
The Length of the Horizon, Copenhagen Contemporary (DNK)

2023
The Length of the Horizon, Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg (DEU)
Retenue, CAPC, Bordeaux (FR)
Remediation, MOCA, Toronto (CA)
Kapwani Kiwanga, Museum Ostwall, Dortmund (DEU)

2022
Kapwani Kiwanga: Off-Grid, New Museum, New York (US)
Zurich Art Prize, Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (SW)
Deposits, State of Concept, Athens (GR)

2021
Potomitans, Art Basel – Feature, with Galerie Poggi, Basel (CH)
Flowers for Africa, Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada
The sand recalls the moon's shadow, Moody Centre for the Arts, Houston, TX
Cache, Goodman Gallery, London
CIMA CIMA, Centre D'Art Contemporain D'Ivry - Le Crédac, France

2020
Kapwani Kiwanga, FKA Witte de With - Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, NL
Formerly Known as Witte de With, Rotterdam, US
Plot,Haus der Kunst, Munich, DE
The Renaissance Society, Chicago, US
The Reach Gallery Museum, Abbotsfor, CA
Counter-Illumination, Capture Photography Festival, CA
Outdoor art commission, BC Hydro Dal Grauer Substation, Capture Photo Festival, Vancouver (CA) Pasquart Kunsthaus Centre d’art, Biel/Bienne, CH
Le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine, FR
Galerie Jérôme Poggi, Paris, FR

2019
A Certain Distance, Centre d'art contemporain d'Ivry, le Crédac, Ivry sur Seine (FR)
Sunlight by Fireside: The Ash Annals, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge (CA)
Safe passage, MIT, List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (US)
Glow, Frieze London, London, galerie Tanja Wagner. (UK) 

2018
Enclosure, Le Parvis, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Ibos, France
Museé d’art de Joliette, Joliette, Canada
Soft Measures, Tramway | Glasgow International, UK
A wall is just a wall (and nothing more at all), Esker Foundation, Calgary, Canada
Strata, CLARK, Centre d’art et de diffusion, Montreal, Canada
Clearing, Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant, Brantford, Ontario, Canada

2017
The Sun Never Sets, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Selected Group Exhibitions

2021
Liminal Identities in the Global South, Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation, Johannesburg
Atmospheres, Pace Gallery, New York
This is Not Africa - Unlearn What You Have Learned, ARoS AarHaus Kunstmuseum, Denmark
Congoville: Contemporary Artists Tracing Colonial Tracks, Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium
Fondation Luma, Aries, France

2020
La Peur au Ventre, Galerie Jérôme Poggi, Paris (FR) 
A Million Roses for Angela Davis, Die Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden (SKD),Dresde (DE) 
On the Threshold, Fondation LUMA, Arles (FR)
Have you Seen A Horizon Lately, Musée d’Art Contemporain Africain Al Maaden (MACAAL) de Marrakech (MA)
Dhaka art summit, The Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka (BD)
Entangled Things, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo (JA)
Made of Honey, Gold, and Marigold, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa (CA)
Walls Turned Sideways: Artists Confront the American Justice System, Tufts University Art Galleries, Medford (US)

2019
Soft Architectures, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
Under the Cover of Darkness, Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin, Germany
Leave No Stone Unturned, Le Cube - independent art room, Rabat (MA)
Toronto Biennal of Art, Toronto, Canada
Le Fil d’Alerte, Prix de la fondation Ricard, Fondation d’entreprise Ricard, Paris, France 
The Sorcerer’s burden, The Contemporary Austin, Austin, USA 
Undefined Territories. Perspectives on Colonial Legacies, MACBA - Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain 

Selected Exhibitions 

Trinket
PAVILION CANADA 2024
60th Venice Biennale


Kapwani Kiwanga has transformed the Canada Pavilion by way of a site-specific sculptural installation. She invites visitors into an immersive environment through an ambitious intervention on the building’s interior and exterior. Viewed from its facade, the building becomes a large-scale tableau: three-dimensional space collapses into a two-dimensional plane where distinctions between inside and outside dissolve through transparency, layering and transgressing of the building’s original boundaries. Kiwanga’s work is anything but static: as one moves through the coil-like architecture, it unfolds, multiplying the visitors’ perspectives.

LEARN MORE

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

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 Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Production Copenhagen Contemporary & Terrarium (2022) Installation, Glass, silica sand, fabric, texilte paint, variable dimensions. Installation view, The Length of the Horizon, Copenhagen Contemporary (2024). Photo: David Stjernholm. Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, London / Galerie Poggi, Paris / Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

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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Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

 

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

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 Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

 Kapwani Kiwanga, pink-blue, 2017, Baker-Miller pink, white paint, white and blue fluorescent tubes, dimensions variable, installation view, A wall is just a wall, The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada, 2017, Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, London / Galerie Poggi, Paris / Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023, Photo: Tony Hafkenscheid

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Exhibition view Kapwani Kiwanga . The length of the horizon (September 16, 2023 - January 7, 2024) Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, London / Galerie Poggi, Paris / Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin, Collection Institut d'art contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes Remai Modern Collection Fondation LUMA Collection © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023, Photo: Marek Kruszewski

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.

EXPLORE EXHIBITION

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Exhibition view Kapwani Kiwanga . The length of the horizon (September 16, 2023 - January 7, 2024) Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, London / Galerie Poggi, Paris / Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin, Collection Institut d'art contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes Remai Modern Collection Fondation LUMA Collection © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2023, Photo: Marek Kruszewski

 

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

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 Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kapwani Kiwanga: Remediation, installation view, Remai Modern, 2023. Photo: Carey Shaw

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kapwani Kiwanga: Remediation, installation view, Remai Modern, 2023. Photo: Carey Shaw

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kapwani Kiwanga: Remediation, installation view, Remai Modern, 2023. Photo: Carey Shaw

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

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.

 

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Installation view, Fundação Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea. Photo: Filipe Braga, 2023

Kapwani Kiwanga delves into the archives of the world and conducts in-depth research that is woven elegantly throughout her artworks. She is also interested in the role of art as a catalyst for revealing and addressing marginalized, and often silenced, socio-political narratives that are part of our shared histories.

– Gaëtane Verna, Executive Director, Wexner Center for the Arts

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Installation views, Fundação Serralves – Museu de Arte Contemporânea. Photo: Filipe Braga, 2023.

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kiwanga’s rigorous investigation and imaginative approach confronts audiences with a deft interest in materials and elemental structures of power. As a trained anthropologist and a social scientist, she occupies the role of a researcher in her projects. She focuses on the periphery of narratives on underrepresented histories and is particularly interested in issues involving historical and contemporary power imbalances. Most of her works, trace the pervasive impact of power asymmetries by placing historic narratives in dialogue with contemporary realities, the archive, and tomorrow’s possibilities.

For the Serralves exhibition, Kiwanga has created a large-scale and immersive installation, with approx. 14.000 mts of vibrant colored cotton ropes. The natural light from the skylight and the large window punctuate the gallery’s architecture, becoming prominent in this intricate multilayered structure, where superposition and transparency are vital elements of the ensemble. The visitor is confronted by a large floor sculpture from the on-going project The worlds we tell: Threshold, displayed on the room’s lower level. A group of four new ceramic panels, were commissioned for this presentation.

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Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

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 Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

 

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

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 Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Installation view, MOCA Toronto. Photo by Laura Findlay.  Courtesy the artist; Galerie Poggi, Paris; Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin; and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, and London. © ADAGP, Paris / SOCAN, Montreal (2022).

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Installation view, MOCA Toronto. Photo by Laura Findlay.  Courtesy the artist; Galerie Poggi, Paris; Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin; and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, and London. © ADAGP, Paris / SOCAN, Montreal (2022).

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Several new works throughout the exhibition are site-specific and made in response to MOCA’s industrial past. These commissions are exhibited in dialogue with existing artworks and new versions of ongoing bodies of work, including a site-specific version of her ongoing sisal installations, flooring and window interventions and an updated series of inflatable vivariums.  Through this broader curated selection, Remediation expands on Kiwanga’s research into how botany has long held a relationship to both exploitation and acts of resistance and how plant life has and may intervene in the rejuvenation of contaminated environments. 

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Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

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 Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

On Growth draws on the colonial histories of institutional and commercial botanic nurseries that heavily influenced the scientific understanding of plants and horticulture of today.

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Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

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 Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

 

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

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.

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kapwani Kiwanga, Terrarium, 2022. Exhibition view, The Milk of Dreams: 59th Venice Biennale, Arsenale, Venice, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, London / Galerie Poggi, Paris / Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin. © Kapwani Kiwanga / ADAGP, Paris (2023) / Copyright Visual Arts-CARCC, Otawa (2023). Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kapwani Kiwanga, Terrarium, 2022. Exhibition view, The Milk of Dreams: 59th Venice Biennale, Arsenale, Venice, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, London / Galerie Poggi, Paris / Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin. © Kapwani Kiwanga / ADAGP, Paris (2023) / Copyright Visual Arts-CARCC, Otawa (2023). Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kapwani Kiwanga, Terrarium, 2022. Exhibition view, The Milk of Dreams: 59th Venice Biennale, Arsenale, Venice, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, London / Galerie Poggi, Paris / Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin. © Kapwani Kiwanga / ADAGP, Paris (2023) / Copyright Visual Arts-CARCC, Otawa (2023). Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

 

 

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 Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

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.

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Exhibition view: New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni. Courtesy New Museum

 

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Exhibition view: New Museum, New York. Photo: Dario Lasagni. Courtesy New Museum

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 Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

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 Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Display in the atrium, which opens up the onto the Foundation’s scenic sculpture garden places the work at the centre of Norval Foundation’s artistic programme this year. Though the sculptural installation was first displayed in Randall’s Island Park in New York, the atrium is well-suited to accommodate the work. The contained nature of the space adds to the impact of the work’s scale and further encourages visitors to explore its aesthetic qualities from every angle. In addition, the box-like simplicity of the space lends itself to the minimalist language of the sculpture. The glass walls at both the front and back of the atrium allows for natural light to shine onto the shade cloths, and create a visual connection between Shady and the external, natural world. The exhibition is curated by Khanya Mashabela and organised by Norval Foundation.

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Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

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.

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

DER ÖFFENTLICHKEIT — VON DEN FREUNDEN HAUS DER KUNST: Kapwani Kiwanga. Plot(Mdk96B7x480)

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

DER ÖFFENTLICHKEIT — VON DEN FREUNDEN HAUS DER KUNST: Kapwani Kiwanga. Plot(Mdk96B7x480)

 

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 Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

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 Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Installation view, Kapwani Kiwanga: Safe Passage, MIT List Visual Art Center, 2019. Artwork © Kapwani Kiwanga. Image courtesy MIT List Visual Arts Center. Photograph by Peter Harris Studio

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

 

 

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.

EXPLORE EXHIBITION

Selected Artworks

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kapwani Kiwanga
Orb, 2023
Hand-made ceramic tiles, acrylic paint, rope,
metal profile and wood frame 
164 x 114 x 10.5 cm (64.6 x 44.9 x 4.1 in.)

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kapwani Kiwanga
Shifting Sands (reds), 2023
Glass, handblown coloured glass, silica sand  
70 x 21.5 x 21.5 cm (27.6 x 8.5 x 8.5 in.)
 

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kapwani Kiwanga
Crossroads, 2022
Fabric, pigment, Atlantic sea salt
55 x 55 cm (21.7 x 21.7 in.)

In a sequence of quilt works created out of fabric treated with pigment and saltwater from the Atlantic Ocean, Kiwanga continues her investigation into the transatlantic slave trade. For the artist, the sea is an archive and witness of violent pasts.

The cloth work combines and materializes her analysis of forced movement and liberatory strategies. Kiwanga’s use of symbols on textiles alludes to the safe houses along the Underground Railroad, often indicated by a quilt hanging from a clothesline or windowsill as a mode of communication. The geometric shapes function as conceptual coordinates of flight, escape and safety —by reading the motifs sewn into the design, an enslaved person on the run could assess immediate dangers. Various triangles, pointing upward, or to the right or left, indicate the direction towards safety whilst a black square indicates a place of safety and rest.

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kapwani Kiwanga
Union of South Africa, 2017
Protocol of assembly and display including archival iconography to
guide the reconstruction of a floral arrangement consisting of cut flowers

Through extensive research into archives related to decolonization, artist Kapwani Kiwanga locates images such as these representing defining moments of independence in countries throughout the African continent. Each image features, to a greater or lesser extent, a floral arrangement—perhaps the only common element to be sourced across a range of ceremonial occasions recognizing the decolonization of Africa. These arrangements range from a boutonnière to an elaborate bouquet.

Kiwanga then takes these images to a local florist in order to recreate the bouquets as closely as possible to the archival images. The fresh arrangements are displayed in a gallery and left to wilt over the duration of the exhibition, just as the memory of a celebratory moment might fade over time. Titled Flowers for Africa, Kiwanga’s series is a conceptual project that questions the material from which history is pictured and remembered. These artworks exist in the form of a protocol; they are recreated for each exhibition according to a set of detailed instructions, with differing results based on the interpretation by the florist.

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kapwani Kiwanga
Keyhole, 2023
Steel structure, plants, water, soil, pea gravel,
LED grow lights, air pump

In Keyhole (2023), Kiwanga creates a large water-filtration system based on the raised-bed ‘keyhole’ garden designs found in Lesotho and other African countries. Using plants taken from the museum’s surroundings, the work includes pea gravel, LED grow lights and air pumps to clean water, demonstrating how plant life can restore environments. The history of the keyhole garden as an accessible food source for those who were otherwise too ill to tend the land during the AIDS crisis of the mid-1990s adds a geo-political dimension.

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kapwani Kiwanga
Subduction Study #3, 2017
Folded pigment prints on paper 285g
52.5 x 68.1 x 3 cm (20.7 x 26.8 x 1.2 in.)

This series of photographic assemblages refer to subduction zones; a geological term which defines the process in which one tectonic plate moves under another before sinking into the mantle as the plates converge. These zones have high rates of earthquakes, volcanism and mountain formations. In this series two photographs taken from rocks in the collection of Paris’ Natural History Museum are placed in relation to one another. One image depicts a rock from the European side of the strait of Gibraltar, while the other belongs to an African country on the Mediterranean shore. As such this project speaks of the probable future collision of the African and European continents at and around the Strait of Gibraltar. The work thus proposes anew continental configuration; a new territory

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kapwani Kiwanga,
Glaze (magenta), 2023
Perspex, coloured transparent vinyl, dry cut wall
Variable Dimensions

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kapwani Kiwanga
Sisal #1, 2022
Sisal fibre on mild steel oval rings with five hanging points
Variable Dimensions

Sisal is a natural fiber derived from the Agave sisalana plant that dominates the agriculture of Tanzania. But when the Canadian-born Paris-based artist visited the East African country, she learned that this plant, native to Mexico, had been introduced to the Tanga landscape by German colonizers around 1891. Tanzania’s eventual dependence on this monocrop proved catastrophic to the newly independent nation when the bottom fell out of the sisal market after the 1960s. Similarly hollow and seemingly open-bottomed, and with an elongated window on one side, the hollow and columnar Sisal #1 seems a hiding place for a partially concealed person, combining two meanings for cache: in English a stored-up treasure (the colonizers’ golden cash crop), and in French the verb hide. “Secretive histories can be found in the plots,” scholar Katherine McKittrick has written in reference to Wynter’s overlap of the two meanings of plot, adding the potential for both to hide secrets.

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery
Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

Kapwani Kiwanga
Semence, 2020
Variable Dimensions

Semence is a monumental installation that brings to the fore ideas of fecundity in plant life through rice grains. The work takes as its reference, the history of the movement of grains of rice through the slave trade —particularly the introduction of red rice to the United States from West Africa. Rice grains are believed to have been hidden by enslaved people in clothing or braided into hair as a means of providing food security and self-sufficiency in the event of an escape from slavery upon reaching the Americas. By referencing this history, Kiwanga replicates rice grains in the form of fifteen thousand individual life-sized ceramic sculptures. The grains are arranged in smaller batches which are sowed into a plot made of wood, metal and plastic.

Selected Press

Kapwani Kiwanga Dossier 2024 -  - Viewing Room - Goodman Gallery

The Brooklyn Rail | Kapwani Kiwanga: Remediation | By Tak Pham
READ HERE

Art News | Rising Star Kapwani Kiwanga to Represent Canada at 2024 Venice Biennale
READ HERE

Frieze | Kapwani Kiwanga’s Afrofuturist Garden | By Carina Bukuts
READ HERE

Financial Times | Plants, poisons and power — the art of Kapwani Kiwanga
READ HERE

Artnet | Kapwani Kiwanga, Known for Her Interdisciplinary Artistic Investigations, Will Represent Canada at the 2024 Venice Biennale | By Taylor Dafoe
READ HERE

The New York Times | Kapwani Kiwanga Has More Questions
READ HERE