Kapwani Kiwanga

Line, 2023

Fabricated from industrial metal and an agricultural textile commonly referred to as “shade cloth,” 'Line' (2023) mirrors the coloured window cut-outs with another reference to the filtering of light. Shade cloth is a fabric used to protect crops at varying degrees in commercial farming which, due to foreign investment, now covers swathes of landscape from North America to Africa. Its visual effect on the land is striking: a once-natural topography becomes a striped, colour-coded palette. Kiwanga’s choice of material is not simply aesthetic, but political. The intent here is to speak to the colonial appropriation of land taken from Indigenous communities, and the manipulation and control of the environment for economic gain.