MOCA is excited to present the first major survey exhibition in Canada of Canadian-French artist Kapwani Kiwanga. Remediation focuses on Kiwanga’s most recent research into how humans and the natural environment navigate tensions between toxicity and regeneration.
Kiwanga’s artistic practice has long underscored the importance of nature’s role in determining the course of history — not only through evolution, but through nature’s ever-shifting response to human intervention. Interested in how the earth has been treated in violent, but also remedial ways, by humankind and by natural phenomena, she investigates how these events and their intended outcomes can result in different repercussions.
Several new works throughout the exhibition are site-specific and made in response to MOCA’s industrial past. These commissions are exhibited in dialogue with existing artworks and new versions of ongoing bodies of work, including a site-specific version of her ongoing sisal installations, flooring and window interventions and an updated series of inflatable vivariums. Through this broader curated selection, Remediation expands on Kiwanga’s research into how botany has long held a relationship to both exploitation and acts of resistance and how plant life has and may intervene in the rejuvenation of contaminated environments.
This project builds upon the relationship established between Kiwanga and MOCA during the presentation of her highly acclaimed work Flowers for Africa, shown at the Museum in 2021.
The exhibition is co-organized by MOCA Toronto and the Remai Modern, Saskatoon, where it will be presented in fall 2023. It was also recently announced that Kiwanga has been chosen to represent Canada at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024.
MOCA is excited to present the first major survey exhibition in Canada of Canadian-French artist Kapwani Kiwanga. Kiwanga creates installation, sculpture, and performance as well as video and sound pieces to explore the relationships between historical narratives, systems of power, and the use of material within these contexts.
For her exhibition at MOCA, Kiwanga presents five new commissions, including a site-specific version of her ongoing sisal installations on the Museum’s free-of-charge Ground Floor, as well as flooring and window interventions. These are presented alongside key existing artworks, such as an updated series of inflatable vivariums from 2020, The Marias, 2020, and Vumbi, 2012.
Through this curated selection, Kiwanga expands on her research into how botany has long held a relationship to exploitation and acts of resistance and how plant life has and may intervene in the rejuvenation of contaminated environments.
This project builds upon the relationship established between Kiwanga and MOCA during the presentation of her highly acclaimed work Flowers for Africa, shown at the Museum in 2021.
The exhibition is co-organized by MOCA Toronto and the Remai Modern, Saskatoon, where it will be presented in fall 2023.
About the Artist
Kapwani Kiwanga is an artist who has emerged in recent years as a highly acknowledged figure within the international contemporary art scene. In 2018, she received both the inaugural Frieze Artist Award (USA) and the Sobey Art Award (Canada), and in 2020 she won the Prix Marcel Duchamp (France).
After completing studies in Anthropology and Comparative Religion at McGill University, with a focus on medical anthropology and an idea of going into documentary filmmaking, Kiwanga turned to the visual arts and attended École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where she is now based. Drawing on her education, experiences, ongoing research and commitment to observation, Kiwanga produces work across a wide variety of artistic mediums to explore the plurality of histories.
