Kapwani Kiwanga at Venice Biennale: "Trinket"

Kapwani Kiwanga is a Canadian artist based in Paris who persistently works across disciplines, including installation, video, photography, and performance. Drawing from her studies and training in social sciences, the Hamilton-born artist explores themes of power, (in)visibility, and collective memory, weaving together narratives that interrogate historical events and their contemporary resonance. Kiwanga has a keen interest in the way cultural phenomena shape societies, exposing the complex nature of power and resistance. Through a conceptual approach based upon meticulous research, Kiwanga challenges viewers to reconsider long-established historical narratives and prompts them to confront and reshape their understandings of our interconnected global histories.

Kiwanga frequently employs unconventional materials and methodologies to provoke critical engagement with her multi-layered subject matter. She welcomes a collaborative method of working, connecting with communities, researchers and experts, and thereby blurring the boundaries between art and its many expressions. Her installations often serve as immersive environments where viewers are invited to confront the layers of meaning embedded within her work. Her innovative use of space, sound, and visual elements creates multi-sensory experiences that encourage reflection on the complexities of identity, culture and power dynamics. Through her thought-provoking work, the artist continues to push the boundaries of contemporary art while challenging viewers to confront the unravelling fabric of power on which our societies lay.

Installation view of the exhibition Kapwani Kiwanga: Trinket, 2024, Canada Pavilion, 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.© Kapwani Kiwanga / Adagp Paris / CARCC Ottawa 2024 Photo: Valentina Mori

In the context of the 60th Venice Art Biennale and representing Canada, Kapwani Kiwanga materializes intangible cultural architectures – how diverse societies have been built through laws, trade, exchange and encounters between people. Her site-responsive installation Trinket delves into material culture, commerce and cultural transformation, considering how various forms of power are manifested, how the histories they suppress are often overlooked, and how they impact everyday life. Kiwanga’s ambitious project transforms the Canada Pavilion into an immersive environment by means of an arresting intervention on the building’s exterior and in its interior.

Viewed from its facade, the building becomes a large-scale tableau: three-dimensional space collapses into a two-dimensional plane where distinctions between inside and outside dissolve through transparency and layering, transgressing the pavilion’s intended boundaries. The exterior installation, titled Impiraresse (blue), adorns the architecture with thousands of strands of blue glass beads, pointing to the cultural significance of a hue that was historically privileged over many others when traded across the globe. A rare natural-occurring colour difficult to produce, blue was additionally prized for its various associations.

Façade view of the exhibition Kapwani Kiwanga: Trinket, 2024, Canada Pavilion, 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. © Kapwani Kiwanga / Adagp Paris / CARCC Ottawa 2024 Photo: Valentina Mori

The principal material of the installation is conterie, also known as seed beads. Historically employed as both currency and items of exchange, these tiny glass units are used by Kiwanga to deftly construct the monumental out of the minute. Conterie could also be approached as an archive or a witness to past transactions that indelibly transformed the socio-economic landscape of the 16th century onwards. These beads were dispersed from Murano in the Venetian archipelago and incorporated into various material cultures throughout the world. Kiwanga interrogates disparities in the perception of these seed beads and how value was attributed to them in the past. What were considered mere trinkets to European traders actually played a significant role economically and culturally in various communities throughout the world.

Seed beads become the conduit through which Kiwanga unravels the complex interplay of trade, power and cultural transformation. The installation addresses the often-destructive history of commerce, yet pushes further, asking viewers to consider how the exchange of these beads for varied materials shaped our present world. Kiwanga’s intervention probes the multifarious accounts of a world forged by transcultural exchange and commodification. Yet, as one moves through the pavilion’s helical architecture, the work’s expansiveness unfolds, opening the possibility of reimagining and reshaping long-established narratives, while broadening the visitors’ perspectives.

Kapwani Kiwanga, Transfer II (Metal, breath, beads), 2024. Bronze, blown glass, glass beads, 160 × 120 × 32 cm. © Kapwani Kiwanga / Adagp Paris / CARCC Ottawa 2024 Photo: Valentina Mori

Inside the pavilion, a limit-defying installation, Material Cartography, combines several materials in their nearly raw states: gold, other metals, and variant forms of Pernambuco wood. These are also found in a series of sculptures, Transfer (I, II III, IV), along with palm oil and glass spheres, an element that the artist uses to signify breath as essential to human life and labour. Through extensive research, Kiwanga chose these elements as they were featured in numerous ledgers and accounts of transoceanic trade involving Venetian conterie. The meeting of these distinct materials with the seed beads formalizes a place of exchange, asking viewers to reflect on questions concerning inherent value, aesthetics and the complexity of global economic relations.

Moreover, the trade of these materials has in many ways fashioned the architecture of the world we now inhabit. These commercial relations are at the root of the infrastructure upon which our societies and economies have been built. As a result, ecosystems around the world were forever altered at a level that far exceeds our common understanding. Yet, beneath the veneer of business transactions can always appear a form of cultural invention, evidenced by the way in which these small objects are repeatedly found in the distinct material culture of the communities in which they were first traded centuries ago.

Kapwani Kiwanga, Transfer III (Metal, wood, beads), 2024. Wood, Pernambuco pigment, copper, glass beads, 160 × 100 × 66 cm. © Kapwani Kiwanga / Adagp Paris / CARCC Ottawa 2024 Photo: Valentina Mori

For Kiwanga, materials are documents in their own right and are brought together in Trinket to create new forms. This mesmerizing installation, where colour, light, sculpture and architecture intertwine, leads visitors through a thought-provoking, choreographed experience. In transforming these beads, these everyday objects, into an expansive work of art, she expands the limits of what sculpture can be. Trinket unveils the nature of our world, in which societies mutate through the complexity of the expansion of global economies and cultural exchange, prompting philosophical reflections on inherent value and aesthetics, and their entanglement within the web of human relations.

The exhibition Kapwani Kiwanga: Trinket, 2024, commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada and supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, is on view in the Canada Pavilion, 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, from April 20 until  November 24, 2024. Share this article and subscribe to our newsletters to stay up-to-date on the latest articles, Gallery exhibitions, news and events, and to learn more about art in Canada.