Kapwani Kiwanga

Kiwanga was born in 1978 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada to a family of Tanzanian origin,[1] and grew up in the nearby town of Brantford, where she took classes at the Glenhyrst Art Gallery.[2] She has said that she gained her perspective on colonialism and Canada's Indigenous people from her time in Brantford, which is situated on the Haldimand Tract in the traditional territories of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples. Kiwanga later studied anthropology and comparative religion at McGill University in Montreal, and art at the "La Seine" program at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.[3] As such, Kiwanga’s artistic practice is intensely research-based, and she often embodies the guise of a scientist, anthropologist, or archivist in the performative “happenings” that are an integral aspect of her overall work in sculpture, painting, video and mixed media installations.[4]

Kiwanga's work is shaped by her academic background, and often involves multiple formats and media in order to present a diversity of experiences for the viewer.[5] Kiwanga explores the social and political aspects of the world by presenting these multiple perspectives, a skill she formed growing up in Canada, visiting family in Tanzania, and spending much of her adult life in France.[1] She employs strategies of social scientific research and documentary modes of presentation in her work.[6] In her Afrogalactica trilogy project (commenced 2011), Kiwanga plays the role of an anthropologist from the future whose research draws upon Afrofuturism, African astronomy and gender.[7] In 'Safe Passage', Kiwanga goes through the history of blackness in America, from slavery to contemporary time and the effect of technology on issues like visibility. It is a sculptural work that is researched-driven and based in Kiwanga's anthropological roots.[1]

Since 2010, Kapwani Kiwanga has received increasingly widespread critical attention for her interdisciplinary approach to art-making that prods the realms of history, psychology, and sother social science, alongside the "pure" sciences. Her work aims to offer nuanced and subversive insight into what constitutes knowledge, truth and authority, both historically and in the present, especially in matters related to the administration of bodies, cultural identity, and behavior. In her ongoing project Flowers For Africa the artist mined archives related to African de-colonization to compile a list of flowers associated with individuals, nations and/or resistance movements; an image library that became the basis for meticulous sculptural recreations of individual flowers, or entire bouquets. Kapwani described the series, in relation to her overall approach, as such: “What I’m trying to do is to acquaint myself with these various historic times, and questions, and more generally an interest I have in power dynamics. With this project I have chosen to look from the African continent at these global questions of power dynamics. This project is a way for me to acquaint myself with different archives, consulting documents and simply pondering on those moments. In this process, this was the most natural gesture which emerged".[4]

Kiwanga has performed or presented her work at over 50 institutions and festivals internationally since 2011. Her performances and exhibits include Afrogalactica: A Brief History of the Future at La Villa Arson, Nice (2012); Afrogalactica: A Brief History of the Future – A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2013); A Conservator's Tale, Jeu de Paume, Paris (2014); Museum of the Blind, Ethnological Museum of Berlin (2014); Afrogalactica: A Brief History of the Future – Across the Board, Tate Project in Lagos, Nigeria (2014); A Spell to Bound the Limitless, FIAC in progress, Grand Palais, Paris (2015); Afrogalactica: A Brief History of the Future, Documenta 14, Athens (2017); Afrogalactica : A Brief History of the Future, Momentum Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art, Sweden (2017); and Afrogalactica : A Brief History of the Future, Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Calgary (2018).[4]

Solo exhibitions of Kiwanga's work have been held at the Centre Georges Pompidou, CCA Glasgow, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo in Almeria, Spain, Salt Beyoglu in Istanbul, the South London Gallery, the Jeu de Paume, the Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, Paris Photo, and The Power Plant. Kiwanga was the 2016 Commissioned Artist at the Armory Show.[8] In January–March 2018, the Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant held a solo exhibition of her work entitled Kapwani Kiwanga: Clearing.[9] In February–May 2018, the Esker Foundation put on A wall is just a wall (and nothing more at all).[10] From 8 February 2019 to 21 April 2019, Kiwanga was exhibited at the MIT List Visual Arts Center in a solo show titled Safe Passage.[1] An exhibition at the New Museum in New York from June 30 through October 16, 2022[11] examined the social history of light as a form of surveillance.[12]

Kiwanga has received two BAFTA nominations for her film and video works,[8] and has received the following awards for her work:

• 2018: Frieze Artist Award[13]
• 2018: Sobey Art Award[14]
• 2018: ADAGP-Etant donnés [15]
• 2020: Marcel Duchamp Prize[16]