Kapwani Kiwanga: Remediation

The first major survey exhibition in Canada by internationally celebrated Canadian/French artist Kapwani Kiwanga titled Remediation takes place across two-floors of the Museum. Alongside recent key artworks, Kiwanga is creating five new commissions and a site-specific sisal installation, that will all be produced locally. 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.

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.

The 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.

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