It is with great pleasure that Galerie Tanja Wagner presents Raw, our fourth solo exhibition with multidisciplinary artist Kapwani Kiwanga.

Raw features all new sculptural works, crafted from glass, silica sand, or sisal fibers. Each work unearths an incongruity: raw materials, despite being seemingly inert, actually remain in perpetual states of flux. As a trained anthropologist, Kiwanga observes how these materials mutate, travel, and evolve over time. Like people, and cultures, their partnerships and associations vary. Their values, both economically and culturally, fluctuate. In Raw, nature is beholden as a highly engaged actor in the course of human history.

In her sisal and steel sculptures, Kiwanga nods to deeply woven histories between the fibres, extractive economics and political subjugation. She was initially mesmerized by sisal fibres while spending time in Tanzania, driving through vast landscapes blanketed with the plant. These long, white fibres are among Tanzania’s most important cash crops, but the organic material is an alien plant in Africa. Deriving from agave, sisal is native to Mexico, and was brought to Tanzania illegally by German plantation owners in the late 19th century. At the time, this extractive economic practice was essential for the growing German economy, today it is imperative to Tanzania’s.

Kiwanga’s Hour Glass sculpture series, initially realized for the 59th Venice Biennale, is continued in Raw with four new Shifting Sands sculptures, each in various colors. The series, made with artisanally handblown glass and fracking sand, developed with Kiwanga’s found appreciation for sand’s ability to transform. Sand evolves, takes on new shapes, and transforms into glass – a process that occurs both naturally and industrially. Kiwanga’s glass sculptures encase fracking sand, almost appearing as a preservation. Yet the production of glass is heavily dependent upon the extraction of sand. Silica sand is extracted far more quickly than it can naturally be replaced, a jarring indication that we are moving towards a sand-scarce future.

With Raw, Kiwanga opens a space within which the viewer can physically encounter raw materials, the histories they’ve endured, and the futures they might entail. This is an overall attempt to help us better understand our environment beyond hegemonic narratives. Building a space within which viewers can spatially experience materiality in alluringly aesthetic forms, Kiwanga enables a shift in perspective. This phenomenological offering is an act of care towards our natural environment that recognizes pluralities in history and demystifies our present.

We couldn’t be happier about Kapwani Kiwanga’s current and upcoming exhibitions. She has been selected to represent Canada at the 2024 Venice Biennale, curated by Gaëtane Verna. She currently has a solo show at the MOCA, Toronto, which surveys the latest explorations in her artistic practice, and in September we look forward to her first major survey taking place at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. In June, she will open a solo show at the Capc Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, in celebration of the museum’s 50th anniversary. Later this autumn, she will have a solo show at the Fundação de Serralves, Porto.