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Person: Kapwani Kiwanga

10 Nov ’22 – 30 Apr ’23

Becoming Flower | MAMAC, Nice

A group exhibition at MAMAC Nice, curated by Hélène Guenin and Rébecca François and part of the Nice Biennal of Arts 2022. With works by Laurence Aëgerter, Maria Thereza Alves, Isa Barbier, Yto Barrada, Hicham Berrada, Minia Biabiany, Melanie Bonajo, Bianca Bondi, Fatma Bucak, Chiara Camoni, Ali Cherri, Jean Comandon & Pierre de Fonbrune, Marinette Cueco, Odonchimeg Davaadorj, Andy Goldsworthy, Nona Inescu, Kapwani Kiwanga, Tetsumi Kudo, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien, Ana Mendieta, Marie Menken, Otobong Nkanga, Dennis Oppenheim, Uriel Orlow, Gabriel Orozco, Giuseppe Penone, Pia Rönicke, Michelle Stuart, Anaïs Tondeur, NILS-UDO, Zheng Bo.

Becoming flower? At a time when ecosystems and climate breakthrough is leading us to rethink our relationship with nature and the living world, we can wonder what can we learn from flowers, from their resilience, from their constant adaptation to their environment, from their sobriety? Vulnerable and essential, they are an indispensable driving force of life: they produce the food that humans, animals and insects consume and the oxygen that we breathe. With scientific advances in plant intelligence and a new approach to life, our fascination for them is growing – far beyond mere aesthetic pleasure. Symbols of fragility and rebirth, they are becoming a particularly powerful indicator for lighting up current issues. Through the eyes of artists, “Becoming Flower” attempts to bring a new and a sensitive light on contemporary ecological, anthropological and geopolitical issues. The exhibition brings to light a botany of world history, as well as new forms of attention, sensitivity and thought.


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14 Nov ’19 – 24 Jan ’20

Leave no Stone unturned | Le Cube, Rabat

Leave No Stone Unturned [Remuer la terre] is a collective exhibition, curated by Clelia Coussonnet, that highlights the links between plants and politics in Morocco and other countries of the global South, while rejecting the idea that nature is ornamental and neutral. By scratching the visible surface to plunge into the interstices and gaps of history, the selected works show plants are intertwined in power networks and suffer from the paradox of being knowledge resources simultaneously accessible and subjected to processes of invisibility. While human impact on climate and environmental change is increasingly discussed in public and scientific debates, still few institutions and individuals explore in depth the largely underestimated relations between plants and politics. Flora is indeed an actor, a pawn and a witness of History, revealing narratives forgotten and eluded by official history’s records.


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27 Sep ’16 – 19 Nov ’16

Mafavuke’s Trial and Other Plant Stories | The Showroom, London

The Showroom presents a major new commission by London-based artist Uriel Orlow, which explores the botanical world as a stage for politics at large through film, photography, installation and sound.

With additional works by Subtle Agency, David Goldblatt, Kapwani Kiwanga, Cedric Nunn, Cooking Sections and Philippe Zourgane.

Working from the dual vantage points of South Africa and Europe, the project considers plants as both witnesses and actors in history, and as dynamic agents – linking nature and humans, rural and cosmopolitan medicine, tradition and modernity – across different geographies, histories and systems of knowledge, with a variety of curative, spiritual and economic powers.

 


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