Kapwani Kiwanga

Entangled histories and recuperative futures.

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Do you know where your tea comes from? Where it was harvested? Where it was flavoured? Packed? Shipped? The sculptural works in Kapwani Kiwanga’s first major survey show in Canada encourage such questions. 

On view until July 23 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto, Remediation transforms plants, raw materials and synthetic products in installations that reflect on entangled histories of trade and colonization’s many afterlives.

The steel hangings of Elliptical Field are partially covered with sisal, a golden fibre used to make twine and rope. The Agave sisalana plant was brought to Tanzania (where Kiwanga traces her paternal roots) by Germans during the colonial period and is now one of the country’s major exports. In this work, the sisal is raw and shaggy. Cut straight over oblong steel frames, it creates a clear distinction between what can be glimpsed through the frame and what remains hidden. 

Beyond the hangings is a curved sisal wall, a structure that would feel ominous were it not for its light-reflecting quality and inviting texture. The opacity of the wall emphasizes a dynamic of concealment and revelation, which recurs throughout the show, raising questions about surveillance, safety and home. 

Residue presents another wall, this one made with drywall and dried banana leaves. The leaves curl atop and over each other in neat rows, their crisp wilting evoking a frozen fragility. Inspired by Kiwanga’s research into chlordecone, a pesticide that was used on banana trees, the piece expands her explorations of extractive industries and plantation economies.

Line features five rectangular steel panels covered in shade cloth, an agricultural textile used to protect commercial crops. The cloth is stretched across the steel to reveal angular colour palettes. While the lines and angles are aesthetically pleasing, a nearby text panel instructs viewers to consider the work’s implications: “The intent here is to speak to the colonial appropriation of land taken from Indigenous communities, and the manipulation and control of the environment for commercial gain.”

Most of the cloth is pink, a colour that helps lower temperatures in greenhouses. The work draws links between extractive practices, appropriation and climate crises, continuing an engagement with plant life and toxicity for which the Hamilton-born and Paris-based artist is known. Kiwanga received the Sobey Art Award in 2018, which recognized Flowers for Africa, a work of floral arrangements that interrogates commemoration, and will represent Canada at the Venice Biennale in 2024. 

Several works focus on remediation more directly by making evident various recuperative and restorative practices. Kiwanga presents a series of vivariums – PVC inflatables that seem to have grown around the plants they house, their glistening plastic bulbs allowing vegetative growth. Primarily designed as habitats for animals, vivariums differ from terrariums, where the goal is to raise plants in a sealed and protected environment. Kiwanga’s hypothetical creations privilege the environment around the plants, encouraging us to imagine new and greener futures.

Keyhole is a small garden with a pool. The effect of this living artwork can be felt in the air because plants were selected to clear toxins from the environment. The installation’s shape is inspired by Lesotho’s keyhole gardens, circular raised permaculture plots designed to improve food security in a drought-prone region of Africa. They feature a narrow walkway – the keyhole – that leads to the plot’s centre, where a compost pile disperses nutrients to surrounding plants. 

Kiwanga’s plants were sourced from an Ontario grower. They include daylilies, feather reed grasses and lizard’s tail, among others. In a gesture of hospitality rarely found at galleries, Kiwanga created wood and sisal chairs so visitors can sit with the plants. I gladly took this opportunity and worked on my laptop for three hours. The remediated air was just that good. ■

Kapwani Kiwanga, Remediation, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto from Feb. 24 to July 23, 2023, and the Remai Modern in Saskatoon from Oct. 6, 2023, to Feb. 25, 2024.

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Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto

Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto

158 Sterling Road, Toronto, Ontario M6R 2B2

416-395-0067

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