Kapwani Kiwanga

Artist and filmmaker Kapwani Kiwanga was trained in the social sciences and conducts research projects in which she assumes the role of researcher. Her methodology includes fashioning systems and establishing protocols as in scientific experimentation to delineate lenses through which one can observe culture and its characteristic propensity toward mutation. Her projects materialise as installations, video, sound and performance. Afrofuturism, anti-colonial struggle and its memory, belief systems, vernacular and popular culture are but some of the research areas which inspire her practice. Kapwani Kiwanga studied Anthropology and Comparative Religions at McGill University. She was an artist in residence at: l’Ecole National Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris (France); Le Fresnoy: National Contemporary Art Studio (France), and MU Eindhoven (The Netherlands). An award winning filmmaker, her documentary work has been nominated for two BAFTAs. She has exhitibited internationally including at the Centre Georges Pompidou (France), the Glasgow Centre of Contemporary Art (UK), the Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporanea Almería (Spain), the Kassel Documentary Film Festival (Germany), the Kaleidoscope Arena Rome (Italy), and Paris Photo (France).

Kapwani taught the workshop Kaleidoscope lens and participates in Lectures & Conversations, with:
A Conversation about Afrofuturism, hybrid gender identity and African astronomy (EN): Kapwani Kiwanga’s interests range from Afrofuturism and science fiction to the anti-colonial struggle, and investigations into the knowledge and beliefs of histories that have, as she says, ‘fallen through the cracks.’ Consistently weaving fact and fiction and uniting documents both archival and imagined, her process flies in the face of traditional practices that tailor an idea to a preferred material. Instead, she seamlessly integrates film, photography, performance, ephemera, and sculpture to play with the mutability of historical narratives. In her ongoing project “Afrogalactica” (2011-present), for example, Kiwanga occupied the invented persona of an anthropologist from the future, researching such fields as hybrid gender identity and African astronomy, and conducting interviews with pertinent figures. ‘I’m not at all pretending to be a seasoned academic,’ says Kiwanga. ‘But I’m always trying to look at multiplicities, or multiple tellings of the same story.’
Quote from: Up and Coming: Armory Artist Kapwani Kiwanga Explores the Social and Political Economy of Gift-Giving By Emily Nathan. www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-up-and-coming-meet-kapwani-kiwanga-the-emerging-artist-challenging-what-you-learned-in-history-class

http://www.kapwanikiwanga.org/