Kapwani Kiwanga: Off-Grid, 2022. Exhibition view: New Museum, New York. Photograph by Dario Lasagni. Courtesy New Museum
“Kiwanga tries to create new ways of seeing and understanding places and events, some of which are poorly visible to begin with. “I am not trying to restate what we know, I am trying to build beyond it.”
- Kate Brown, I’m Proposing Many Ways of Seeing: Artist Kapwani Kiwanga on Unearthing Buried Histories to Imagine the World Anew, Artnet news, August, 20, 2020
Exhibition view, 59th International Art Exhibition, Biennale di Venezia, 2022. Photography by Sebastiano Pellion Di Persano. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Poggi, Paris; Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin; and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.
Canadian-born, Paris-based artist Kapwani Kiwanga’s work traces the pervasive impact of power asymmetries by placing historic narratives in dialogue with contemporary realities, the archive, and tomorrow’s possibilities.
It often manifests as installations, sound, video, and performance. She intentionally confuses truth and fiction in order to unsettle hegemonic narratives and create spaces in which marginal discourse can flourish. As a trained anthropologist and social scientist, she occupies the role of a researcher in her projects.
Kapwani Kiwanga, Flowers for Africa, 2020. Exhibition view, Prix Marcel Duchamp 2020, Centre Pompidou, Paris. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Poggi
Her work is research-driven, instigated by marginalised or forgotten histories, and articulated across a range of materials and mediums including sculpture, installation, photography, video, and performance.
Kiwanga co-opts the canon; she turns systems of power back on themselves, in art and in parsing broader histories. In this manner Kiwanga has developed an aesthetic vocabulary that she described as “exit strategies,” works that invite one to see things from multiple perspectives so as to look differently at existing structures and find ways to navigate the future differently.
Kapwani Kiwanga: Safe Passage, 2019. Exhibition view, MIT List Visual Art Center. Courtesy the artist, and Galerie Poggi. Photograph by Peter Harris Studio
PRESS REVIEW
New York Times - To Illuminate History, an Artist Turns Out the Lights (2022)
After 52 - Revealing the Past, Illuminating the Future: Kapwani Kiwanga’s Flashbacks (2022)
Financial Times - Plants, poisons and power — the art of Kapwani Kiwanga (2021)
Art Basel - How I became an artist: Kapwani Kiwanga (2021)
KAPWANI KIWANGA - BIOGRAPHY
Kapwani Kiwanga (b. 1978 in Canada, based in Paris, France).
Kiwanga studied Anthropology and Comparative Religion at McGill University, Canada. She followed post-graduate studies at École Nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (France) and Le Fresnoy: National Contemporary Art Studio (France).
She received the Zurich Art Prize (DE) in 2022, the Marcel Duchamp prize (FR) in 2020 and in 2018 the Frieze Artist Award (USA) as well as the Sobey Art Award (CA). Her film and video works have been nominated for two BAFTAs and have received awards at international film festivals.
She has exhibited internationally including 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (IT), New Museum, New York (US), Haus der Kunst, Munich (DE); Centre Pompidou, Paris (FR); Jeu de Paume, Paris (FR); Power Plant, Toronto (CA); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (CA); Albertinum museum, Dresden (DE); MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (USA); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (USA); Esker Foundation, Calgary (CA); Whitechapel Gallery, London (UK); Serpentine Galleries, London (UK); and Yuz Museum, Shanghai (CHN) among others.