How I became an artist: Kapwani Kiwanga

‘I went through two post-graduate programs – at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and at Le Fresnoy [in northern France] – and figured out what I wanted to do. During my last year at the Fresnoy, in 2009, I made the Sun Ra Repatriation Project, which I consider my first artwork. It came out of my desire to do research, interview people, and travel, and to then find new forms of documentation, without sticking to text and image. Sun Ra said he came from Saturn and I created a poetic but also literal repatriation back to that planet. I traveled around Europe and the US and interviewed people who had known him – amateur scientists, musicians, historians, poets, and esoteric thinkers. This became a portrait that used radio frequencies to broadcast the image to the cosmos.

‘That work led to the series “Afrogalactica” [2011–], which takes Afrofuturism as a starting point. It consists of three lecture-performances that look at Afrofuturism, gender and race as cultural constructions, a future where gender and sexual fluidity is the norm, and finally, astronomical sites across the African continent. It was the first time I worked in performance and it’s a form I really appreciate. I always work within my means – if I don’t have any money I work with what’s available. Performance in that sense was quite fitting because all I had was my computer and my time. From there, my work has evolved thanks to different opportunities and having more space.

‘One of my works that people took notice of, Flowers for Africa [2012–], grew from a residency at the Institut français in Dakar, Senegal. I was interested in the moment when African nations gain their independence. In Senegal’s National Archives, I looked at newspaper articles and photos, but was quite dissatisfied with simple images of independence that I felt we had already seen and think we know – diplomats shaking hands. Eventually, I noticed a bouquet of flowers in the corner of a photograph. Those cut flowers were a witness to the moment in a way that allowed me to push beyond the frame. That’s what I’m looking for in archives – what falls outside official discourse, what’s on the margins. In these ceremonies of independence what is on the margins is of course the public, who eventually inherit the political systems in these new countries. Working with florists I recreated a floral sculpture that activates that past moment, but its reactivation is always slightly different, a reinterpretation, and it eventually fades away.

‘The question of ephemerality is important in terms of my study of flux, change, and mutability. Things can always be rewritten. The materials I work with tend to be quite fragile and unstable. In the archive, there’s this tug and pull between fixing something in an image or text and wanting to create another kind of document or witness. The bouquets resist stability. The work asks us to be continually active in consideration of ourselves, our pasts, our future.

‘Identity is not something that interests me very much, partly because of this question of flux and continual change. I made a body of work around the Maji Maji war [1905–07] in what is now Tanzania, where my father’s side of my family is based. It came about partly because my father, very nonchalantly, recounted a local story when we were visiting our family village. The family connection was coincidental though. If it had been the other side of my family, I could have ended up in northern Canada doing a comparable kind of research. It was a question of lesser-known history and the variety of languages around it – texts, oral history, folkloric language, and so on.

‘How nature has witnessed human and social history has been a thread throughout my work. At the moment, I’m looking at geology and minerals and how those are also literally a record of our past. I’ve also started working with sisal again, which I first used in 2013 and is linked to Tanzania’s economic history. I use sisal in an unprocessed, liminal, in-between state, often contrasting it with a more rigid structure. I like its mutable qualities, the promise that it can change into something else.

‘When I made narrative films, they shared a point of view. I wanted to be less authoritative, to not guide how things should be interpreted. Sharing what I’ve come across, but leaving it open for other people, is what art has enabled me to do.’

Kapwani Kiwanga is represented by Galerie Poggi (Paris), Goodman Gallery (Johannesburg, Cape Town, and London), and Galerie Tanja Wagner (Berlin). In September, she is presenting a solo project in the Features sector of Art Basel in Basel with Galerie Poggi. Her exhibition 'Flowers for Africa' at the Fondation Luma in Arles, France, is currently on view through September 30, 2021, and another solo show entitled 'Flowers for Africa' will run from July 23–August 29, 2021, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto, Canada. Kiwanga's show 'The sand recalls the moon's shadow' will also be on view at the Moody Center for the Arts in Houston, Texas, from September 17–December 19, 2021.

Skye Sherwin is an art writer based in Rochester, UK. She contributes regularly to The Guardian and numerous art publications.

Top image: Kapwani Kiwanga, The Marias, 2020. Installation view at Kunstinstituut Melly, at formerly known Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, 2020–21. Courtesy of Galerie Poggi, Paris.