Kapwani KiwangaThe Sun Never Sets
For Kapwani Kiwanga’s first solo exhibition in Africa, the Paris-based artist investigates the intersection of history, politics and the organic, presenting new work in which the 20th century expression, ‘the sun never sets on the British Empire’ is subtly critiqued.
The Sun Never Sets comprises works of a variety of media, including video installation and sculpture, through which the artist positions the natural world as a ‘witness’ to colonial rule and, thus, an important means of archival documentation in and of itself.
The centrepiece – a video installation from which the exhibition draws its title – serves as the literal and conceptual backdrop for the exhibition, whereby the romanticized image of a sunset operates as a critique of colonial intervention and appropriation of nature for economic ends.
In new work from her ongoing project, Flowers for Africa, the artist consults with florists to re-create flower arrangements, referencing archival imagery from African independence ceremonies, and re-contextualising them in the contemporary gallery space where they gradually wilt and die.
These inherently fragile works point to a process of investigative re-enactment, responding to research from African visual archives to challenge inherent biases in historical records. The flower arrangements become a poignant metaphor for 21st century disillusionment felt in post-independent African societies.
Curatorial statement:
Kapwani Kiwanga’s first solo exhibition in Africa, The Sun Never Sets, offers a contemplative analysis of nature and the human histories it belies. Kiwanga’s anthropological background informs the research methodology in her practice. In recent work, the artist deploys archival material to look at how the natural world has been used in human endeavors and how that use (and abuse) is reflected in the physical landscapes left behind. In this way, Kiwanga’s work serves as a comment on colonialism, a project that, by its intent and definition, was about the use of the land and its resources.
The film, The Sun Never Sets is a montage of the sun setting in multiple locations, through collaboration with videographers around the world. The foremost significance of the chosen locations is that they are in countries that were once, or are still, under British subjection, evoking the saying from which both the exhibition and the video draw their title: ‘The sun never sets on the British Empire’. The work sets up the temporal notion that colonialism persists even after independence in various contemporary forms, a notion echoed by many living and observing post-colonial experiences.
Artworks
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Artist Bio
Kapwani Kiwanga (b. 1978, Hamilton, Canada) traces the pervasive impact of power asymmetries by placing historic narratives in dialogue with contemporary realities, the archive, and tomorrow’s possibilities. Her work is research-driven, instigated by marginalised or forgotten histories, and articulated across a range of materials and mediums including sculpture, installation, photography, video, and performance. Kiwanga co-opts the canon; she turns systems of power back on themselves, in art and in parsing broader histories. In this manner Kiwanga has developed an aesthetic vocabulary that she described as “exit strategies,” works that invite one to see things from multiple perspectives so as to look differently at existing structures and find ways to navigate the future differently.
In 2024, Kiwanga’s acclaimed solo presentation titled 'Trinket', for the Canadian Pavilion, at the 60th Venice Biennale, commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada, debuted a site-responsive sculptural installation made of conterie, also known as seed beads. The installation examined Global trade and transactional relations between Africa and Europe and continues the artist’s concerns with how diverse forms of power are manifested.
In 2023, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg presented Kiwanga’s first comprehensive mid-career retrospective, 'The Length of the Horizon'. This show includes her memorable Venice Biennale installation Terrarium (2022).
In 2020, Kiwanga received the Prix Marcel Duchamp (FR). She was also the winner of the Frieze Artist Award (USA) and the annual Sobey Art Award (CA) in 2018.
Selected group exhibitions include: Whitechapel Gallery, London (UK); Serpentine Galleries, London (UK); Yuz Museum, Shanghai (CHN); MOT – Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (JPN); Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (DE); Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden – MACAAL, Marrakech (MAR); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (CA); Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (USA); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (USA); Centre Pompidou, Paris (FR); Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal (CA); ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Aarhus (DK) and MACBA, Barcelona (ESP).
Solo exhibitions include: Copenhagen Contemporary, Haus der Kunst, Munich; Kunstinstituut Melly – Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel/Bienne; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; Albertinum museum, Dresden; Artpace, San Antonio; Esker Foundation, Calgary; Tramway, Glasgow International; Power Plant, Toronto; Logan Center for the Arts, Chicago; South London Gallery, London and Jeu de Paume, Paris.
Collections include: NOMAS Foundation, Rome, Italy; FRAC PACA, Marseille, France; Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA; Museo de Arte Contemporanea de Castilla y Léon, MUSAC, León, Spain; Musée départemental d’art contemporain de Rochechouart, Rochechouart, France; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, France; Kadist Art Foundation Paris/San Francisco, France and USA; and Mead Art Museum, Amherst, USA.
Kiwanga lives and works in Paris.
