Kapwani Kiwanga’s research-driven sculptures, installations, videos, and performances tie together objects from particular locales, evidence of economic and political power, the global African diaspora, and the history of colonialism to idiosyncratically reread established histories, often focusing on disruptions centered around belief, mythology, and impermanence. As Gaëtane Verna, executive director of the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and the curator of “Trinket,” Kiwanga’s multimedia exhibition for the Canadian pavilion at the Venice Biennale, explains, Kiwanga is “interested in the role of art as a catalyst for revealing and addressing alternative and often silenced, marginalized sociopolitical narratives that are part of our shared histories.”
Kiwanga’s approach is heavily influenced by her studies in anthropology and comparative religion at McGill University, as well as the fact that she comes from a working-class Canadian family with ties to Tanzania. The artist, who has been based in Paris for over a decade, explained the importance of this background to Skye Sherwin in 2021 for Art Basel Stories: “I didn’t think I was going to make art. I studied anthropology…[which] pushed me toward addressing multiple perspectives and textual mutability.” She realized, however, that academia wasn’t for her. “Two years into the four-year program, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be an academic, simply because I felt the audience was too limited.”
Art, on the other hand, offered a way to reach larger numbers of people. Kiwanga began with film and freelance documentary work but soon felt limited. After doing two post-graduate programs—at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at Le Fresnoy in northern France—she figured out how to achieve her independence: “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.” In the intervening years, Kiwanga has become one of Canada’s most important and recognized artists, receiving the Frieze Artist Award and the Sobey Art Award, as well as the ADAGP-Étant donnés Prize in 2018. In 2020, she was award the Prix Marcel Duchamp, and her installation Flowers for Africa was shown at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
Kiwanga defines her work as “70 percent research, 30 percent making. I see the whole installation as a place of exchange between all these materials and the places they come from.” Visually, she employs the language of Minimalism and color theory in response to specific sites. Certain materials—including sisal fibers, shade cloth, glass, kernels, seeds, and plants—have become noteworthy touchstones and important conveyors of meaning in her installations and individual works. For each piece, Kiwanga provides background information about the underlying issues that influenced her thinking, but there is no definitive meaning or single narration to be obtained. Every installation and exhibition is open-ended—what the viewer takes away depends on individual experience and interaction. This is important for Kiwanga, who said in Art Basel Stories: “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.”
This open approach is clearly evident in “Trinket,” a conceptual evocation of Venice’s rich mercantile history and the socioeconomic landscape of the 16th century. For Kiwanga, the treatment of space is a significant “artistic gesture,” and the architecture of the Canadian pavilion posed a challenge: “There are no right angles, there is no cube…You cannot just bring any project into that space.” One of her first decisions was to remove the wooden panels on the front of the building: “I knew I wanted to work with the architecture of the place and to create a dialogue with the open air. It was important to push boundaries and to create a sense of connectivity between the work inside and the exterior of the particular place.” The dissolution of the distinction between inside and outside, using the interior and exterior walls as a frame, allows for an undulating abstract tableau that discloses multiple perspectives through a melding of structure, color, materials, and space, transforming the pavilion into a striking, site-specific sculptural environment.
Murano glass beads—the trinkets alluded to in the exhibition title—form the primary component of Kiwanga’s various works. As she explains, “The Venetian trade of glass beads symbolizes power, decoration, and facilitating trade.” Glass once played an important economic and political role in the Venetian empire, so these tiny beads, employed as currency and as items of exchange, helped to shape the world. Thanks to a supplier in Murano with a sizable stock of assorted antique beads, Kiwanga was able to gather an estimated seven million vintage glass droplets, or conterie, incorporating them into forms that rise from the pavilion’s floor onto the walls and spill out into the courtyard.
A network of luminous curtains made from strands of these minuscule beads covers the pavilion’s interior walls, creating the effect of a glass fresco. The various colors evince subtle but vibrant gradations, shifting across yellow and orange to deep purple and neutral gray. Traversing this skillfully orchestrated tapestry is a linear zip made from transparent beads that resembles a beam of light or a lightning bolt. Kapwani sees this punctuating element “as a type of material cartography of trade routes joining together time past and time present as well as showing the pavilion’s wall.”
Four freestanding sculptural groupings (all titled Transfer) occupy the center of the space. Their mysterious presence, juxtaposed against the ethereal wall of beads, enhances Kiwanga’s focus on commerce and materiality. Composed of various materials, including metal and wood, related to the trade of conterie, the sculptures are inlaid with carefully composed beadwork, which underscores their forms and physical presence. Kiwanga wanted to “create an interface with the beads and the sculptures…Historically, the beads became a means of acquiring goods—one material became equivalent to another. I wanted to formalize the space with definitive forms—in each grouping, the beads and sculptures have a relationship of each material being equivalent to another. Beads became a bridge to an end for each trader.”
The freeform Transfer III (Metal, wood, beads), which resembles a type of suspended arabesque, seems to defy gravity. The vivid green beaded border that outlines its contours augments the graceful salmon-colored faces. Transfer I (Metal, breath, palm oil, beads) combines a bold, black arch—a form associated with initiation, transformation, and ceremonies of renewal in many cultures—with two blown-glass vessels, one clear and the other colored a vivid red-orange. Passing through the archway would seem to signify passing from the old into a new phase of life.
Outside, the front of the pavilion is draped in vibrant strings of majestic blue beads whose color recalls the ultramarine of lapis lazuli, once as precious as gold. The suspended curtains sway gently, softening solid brick walls and giving the illusion that the building is itself moving. Explaining the monochrome blue, Kiwanga said, “Blue beads were the most demanded color and valued in trading across cultures. They carried a higher value and were used significantly by the Venetians.”
Complex and stunning, “Trinket” burrows into the details of Venetian history, constructing the monumental from the minute. The tiny units of conterie spreading out across the pavilion collectively serve as a metaphor for global reach, each bead a potential witness to past, sometimes dark, transactions. With their spectacular color and presence, the sculptural arrangements act as seductive signifiers, enticing us to pause, examine, and think about connections and cross-currents—all within a soothing environment where beauty becomes a transportive vehicle. For Kiwanga, “There is always an ambiguity between the positive and violent. Even if the peacefulness is there, it is a practice in holding space for the violent, the ugly, the painful. In this particular installation, I tried creating an attractive environment that is full of positive energy. I aim to make something that can shake [people] out of their everyday—a space where even for a moment, you are jolted and your body and mind have a different experience.” Instead of dwelling on the negatives of the past, she wants us to acknowledge them so we can learn and then move forward: “I live in the now, and integrate the context of the past so to build a better tomorrow.”
“Kapwani Kiwanga: Trinket” is on view at the 60th Venice Biennale through November 24, 2024.
