“Kapwani Kiwanga’s (*1978, CA / FR) working method is practice-based, initiated by marginalised or forgotten stories and historical events, which are articulated formally in her sculptures, installations, photographs and videos. The artist contrasts the research with the expressive materiality of her work, with which she refers to socio-political phenomena, syncretism or the global effects of power structures. She questions how the writing of history, authoritarian systems and the generation of knowledge function and undermines the offical understanding of truth by expanding history with popular belief and spirituality. The alternative reading of past and present includes a multiplicity of perspectives, in which the inveterate social and political moments are inherent. Kiwanga consciously mixes truth and fiction in order to unhinge hegemonic narratives and create spaces in which discourses on the margins can thrive.

In another strand of narration Kiwanga is concerned with the power dynamics of architecture and public buildings, including disciplinary buildings which, with her design elements create a decidedly physical and psychological quality of the built environment in question. The body is subjected there to a process of seeing and being seen and has to follow pre-determined lines of movement and spatial structures.”