Multidisciplinary artist Kapwani Kiwanga will represent Canada at the 60th Venice Biennale, the largest exhibition of contemporary art in the world.
The National Gallery of Canada made the announcement this Wednesday morning, thus confirming the choice made by several experts in contemporary Canadian art who had been mandated to select the artist who would represent the country at this exhibition, which will take place from April 20 to November 24, 2024. Last year, the 59th edition of the Venice Biennale attracted more than 800,000 visitors from around the world during the 197 days of the exhibition.
The lucky winner, Kapwani Kiwanga, was born in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1978. She then studied anthropology and comparative religion at McGill University, before beginning studies in arts at the École des Beaux -Arts of Paris, city where she still lives today. Since 2005, the 45-year-old artist has participated in numerous exhibitions held notably in France as well as in the United Kingdom and the United States.
A multidisciplinary artist, Kapwani Kiwanga has repeatedly juggled sculpture, video, installation and performance to create his works, which regularly address themes of colonial appropriation while giving an important place to the stories of marginalized people. Many of his works address, among other things, struggles that occurred in Africa during the colonial period.
The artist has also won numerous awards in recent years, including the Zurich Art Prize in 2022, as well as the Frieze Artist Award, which was presented to her in New York in 2018. She has also won in 2020 the Marcel Duchamp prize, one of the most prestigious visual arts awards in France, for his installation Flowers for Africa.
The Venice Biennale has more than 80 participating countries each year who come to present the works of some of their most prominent contemporary artists.