reconnecting

Étendre l'espace de la vie. Le travail de Kapwani Kiwanga sur le seuil de musées.

A presentation by Lotte Arndt in Bordeaux.

In her projects deployed from objects contained in museum collections of colonial origin, artist Kapwani Kiwanga has repeatedly questioned how museumization in the West has transformed objects, obstructed access, and altered the histories they may carry. Her artistic work introduces a counterweight to the erasure of multiple connections and objectification: she approaches objects as traces whose uncertain status is highlighted by the multiplication of narratives. Thus, she promotes modalities of transmission that pass through sensitive experience, words and the living.

The presentation focuses specifically on Kapwani Kiwanga's works and interventions that - while pointing to the destruction caused by colonization - activate connections that go beyond these violent contexts, inscribe themselves in other filiations, and build other horizons. Based on the works, my exchanges with Kapwani Kiwanga and an abundance of documentation, I will propose to read the approaches and forms developed by the artist as devices of reconnection and transformation.