Goodman Gallery is delighted to present new work by Kapwani Kiwanga in a solo exhibition, Rudiments. The exhibition follows themes related to transcultural exchanges, material histories and world-making established in the artist’s Canadian Pavilion presentation at the 2024 Venice Biennale 'Trinket' as well as her Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art show 'Kapwani Kiwanga: Where salt and freshwater meet and crooked trees filter the sun.'
“Kiwanga has built her career on the hard work of research: of exploring archives, of asking questions and distrusting simplicity. Since the start of her career, she has eschewed conventional ways of telling stories as they fail to contain the complexities to which she aspires.” - Edward Behrens on Kiwanga’s practice in Apollo, 2024Goodman Gallery is pleased to present ‘Rudiments’, a new solo exhibition by Kapwani Kiwanga, marking her return to the London gallery following 2024 Venice Biennale Canada Pavilion solo presentation ‘Trinket’ and her travelling 2023 mid-career retrospective, ‘The Length of the Horizon’ at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg and Copenhagen Contemporary
‘Rudiments’ continues the artist's exploration of various forms of world-making, delving into how diverse cultures construct and interpret their origins while also drawing attention to how conditions of trade and exchange affect realities.
Often, Kiwanga focuses on the body as the primary receptor, drawing attention to the unique bodily sensations and perceptions experienced within specific environments she creates. Through this approach, she engages our perception and interactions with the world around us, challenging the accepted systems embedded within structures built throughout time. Although the works in the show are less overtly somatic, they remain sensorial, stimulating perception through line, colour, shape, and form, emphasising basic rhythms and tectonic scales.
The exhibition draws attention to the essential elements that seem foundational to world-building. The materials in the exhibition subtly point to the primacy of earth, rock, fire and water, meditating on their role in shaping the physical environment.
Be it hand-made ceramic tiles that resonate with the solidity of earth, gold leaf that evokes histories of extraction, the pliability of rope and its reference to maritime history as connecting various communities, or metal characterised by its strength, durability, and malleability.
Works on the upper level of the gallery, ‘A Coincidence of Wants’ — made with glass beads, and metal leaf and wood— Kiwanga draws attention to the historical and ongoing impact of transoceanic trade exchanges. By highlighting these materials, she gestures to how the movement of goods across continents has shaped our contemporary world, influencing economic systems, cultural exchanges, and material culture. The work not only reflects on the legacy of trade but also invites us to consider how such historical processes continue to resonate in our current global landscape.
The works in the lower level of the gallery — made from handmade ceramic tiles, acrylic paint, rope, metal leaf and wood frame — take the notion of the natural environment as an element in the construction of worlds and cosmogonies, evoking imagined landscapes. Kiwanga nudges towards these elements in both form and title; ‘Magma’, ‘Rift’, ‘Cascade’, ‘Dune’, ‘Canopy’, ‘Astres’ (translated as stars in English).
Artworks
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Notions of utopia, which course through the exhibition, challenge and expand our knowledge of possibility (and possibilities of knowledge). By suggesting the possibility of new worlds, ‘Rudiments’ reflects the limitless potential of existence—spaces that exist alongside our present reality, yet reveal the complex facets of human experience and suggest alternative possibilities.
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.
