Kapwani Kiwanga is a Canadian artist whose critically acclaimed, research-driven practice spans installation, sculpture, performance, video, and sound. Born in 1978 in Hamilton, Ontario, and currently based in Paris, France, Kiwanga draws from her academic background in anthropology and comparative religion to examine the complexities of history, power, and perception.

Her interdisciplinary work explores the mechanisms of control embedded in material culture, architecture, and institutional systems, often through site-responsive installations that transform research into sensorial form. Trained at McGill University and the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Kiwanga frequently operates at the intersection of science and fiction, mining archives and historical narratives to reveal the politics of visibility, memory, and erasure.

In projects such as Flowers for Africa (2013–ongoing), Kiwanga reimagines archival remnants of African independence ceremonies through ephemeral floral arrangements that decay over time, challenging traditional notions of documentation. Her installation Porous Portal #3 (2021), composed of cascading sisal fibers and painted steel, references colonial economies and barriers—both physical and conceptual—while resisting actual passage through its structure.

Themes of surveillance and spatial control are central to works like Safe Passage and Cloak (2022), in which Kiwanga investigates the use of light, color, and architecture as instruments of behavioral regulation. From the colonial history of sisal production in East Africa to the use of psychological color theory in institutional design, her practice engages deeply with the material histories that structure lived experience.

Kiwanga’s work has been presented in major solo exhibitions at institutions including the Centre Pompidou, Jeu de Paume, MIT List Visual Arts Center, the New Museum in New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto. She has received numerous international honors, including the Frieze Artist Award, the Sobey Art Award, and the prestigious Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2020.

Through a unique combination of scholarly inquiry and aesthetic experimentation, Kapwani Kiwanga continues to forge a powerful and poetic body of work that interrogates dominant histories while imagining new trajectories of liberation and resilience.