Europe
Kapwani Kiwanga
Flowers for Africa : Namibia
2017
Kapwani Kiwanga, "Flowers for Africa : Namibia", 2017
Flowers for Africa is a protocol project started in 2014, which questions the material that history is made of: its fragility, its infallibility, its visibility and its hierarchy. Starting with extensive research into visual archives related to decolonization, Kapwani Kiwanga focused upon the floral arrangements that were omnipresent in the images of ceremonies or events related to the independence of African countries. In the work’s protocol, the artist enumerates the bouquet’s components in order to reproduce them as found in the images. The bouquet’s reinterpretation is open, highlighting the possibilities to give new meanings to these historical events, serving as a reminder of the fallibility and incomplete fixity of the archive.
Kapwani Kiwanga is a contemporary researcher, installation, video, photography, sound and performance artist currently based in Paris. Kiwanga’s work confuses truth and fiction in order to unsettle hegemonic narratives and create spaces in which marginal discourse can flourish. As a trained anthropologist and social scientist, the artist occupies the role of a researcher in her projects. Afrofuturism, anti-colonial struggle and its memory, scientific methodologies, belief systems, vernacular and popular culture are but some of the research areas which inspire her practice. Favoring research, scientific enquiry and unexplored anecdotes, Kiwanga’s practice is concerned less with objecthood than historical narratives and challenging patriarchal notions of truth and being. Throughout her practice, Kiwanga looks at the architecture of historical memory, exploring specifically the immateriality of symbols and structures. Her minimalist visual language, the research of Kiwanga is carefully curated and pertinently displayed, mixed with both sensible cynicism and a liberatory lyricism.