Kapwani Kiwanga

Kapwani Kiwanga
Porous Portal #3, 2021
Sisal fibers and painted steel
501 × 360 × 62 cm
TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection

In her large-scale installation Porous Portal #3, Paris-based artist Kapwani Kiwanga transforms organic material into a tactile monument to memory, resistance, and geopolitical entanglement. Composed entirely of cascading sisal fibres supported by a painted steel armature, the work evokes a threshold—both physical and conceptual—through which viewers must pass, disrupting conventional modes of exhibition viewing and instead inviting embodied experience.

The work was initially conceived for the exhibition Sarah Maldoror: Cinema Tricontinental at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in 2021, honoring the legacy of the pioneering filmmaker and activist Sarah Maldoror. Closely aligned with anti-colonial liberation movements in Angola, Cape Verde, and Guinea-Bissau, as well as the literary voices of the Francophone Caribbean, Maldoror’s life and work refused imposed boundaries—of nation, genre, or gender. Kiwanga responds to this radical openness with a structure that is at once architectural and permeable, monumental yet soft.

The material at the heart of Porous Portal #3—sisal—is central to the work’s meaning. Sourced from the Agave sisalana plant, sisal was introduced to Tanzania, where Kiwanga’s paternal family lives, by German colonizers in the late 19th century. Although not native to East Africa, the plant became integral to the region's colonial and postcolonial economy. Termed “White Gold,” sisal was cultivated extensively during colonial rule, only for the industry to collapse following independence in the 1960s, devastating local economies. Kiwanga’s use of this fibre not only references a material history of exploitation and monoculture but also reflects how landscapes—and the people who inhabit them—are shaped by systems of power.

Drawing from her background in anthropology and informed by extensive research, Kiwanga uses material not simply as form but as archive. In Porous Portal #3, the natural fibres spill downward in heavy curtains, at once seductive and imposing. The work functions as a tactile archive of transcontinental displacement, economic dependency, and ecological transformation. Its structure, with openings cut into the fibre walls, allows light, air, and movement to pass through—making space for interruption, encounter, and reflection.