Kapwani Kiwanga
Flowers for Africa: Uganda, 2014.
About:
Born 1978 in Hamilton, Ontario and based in Paris, Kiwanga has a versatile practice that often takes shape through video, sound and performance, relying on ephemera and collective history to form the bases of her approach. As a trained anthropologist and social scientist, she occupies the role of a researcher in her projects. Her methodology includes assembling narratives and establishing protocols, to observe culture and its characteristic propensity toward mutation, sometimes intentionally confusing truth and fiction in order to unsettle hegemonic narratives where marginal discourse can flourish. Afrofuturism, the anti-colonial struggle, collective memory, belief systems, vernacular and popular culture are but some of the research areas that inspire her practice.
Flowers for Africa: Nigeria, 2014.
White Gold II, 2016.
Decortication Table, 2016.
Turns of Phrase, Fig. 8, 2015.
In her films, installations and performances, which revolve around notions of belief and its relationship to “knowledge,” Kiwanga employs documentary modes of representation, various material sources, and testimonies in a quasi-scientific approach. She is interested in different approaches to the role of artist, explored most notably in her Afrogalactica trilogy project (2011 – ongoing), for which she has invented and occupies the character of an anthropologist from the future who explores across vast fields of knowledge relating to Afrofuturism, hybrid genders and African astronomy. (text The Armory Show)