How can a place be transformed without altering its character? How can a place steeped in history be made to speak and resonate?

This is precisely what the Franco-Canadian artist Kapwani Kiwanga has achieved, invited by the Centre for Visual and Contemporary Arts (Capc) in Bordeaux to take over the large nave of this former warehouse of colonial goods converted into a place of contemporary creation since 1973.

Full of lightness and sensuality, his monumental installation, consisting of a covering of suspended blue circles, like sails, made of maritime ropes, evokes the indigo imported during the slave trade that made the port of Bordeaux wealthy, as well as the ebb and flow of the river (the Garonne) that crosses the city from one end to the other and flows beneath the building's floor. Water also trickles down two curtains of
strings in this immersive kinetic and sound installation are designed to alter our perception of space by playing with "visibility, invisibility, and opacity." The invisibility and visibility of the water and the stone arches and pillars of the warehouse, built in 1824 to store the
Colonial goods (sugar, coffee, cotton and indigo) from the West Indies, but also the suffering of slavery…

1. Exhibition view Plot, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2020 © Photo: Dominik Gigler © Kapwani Kiwanga and Tanja Wagner gallery, Berlin ©Adagp, Paris, 2023.

2. © Kapwani Kiwanga, pink-blue, 2017 / Baker-Miller pink paint, white paint, white and blue neon lights, dimensions variable / view of the exhibition A wall is just a wall, The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada, 2017 © Kapwani Kiwanga / Galerie Poggi, Paris / Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin / Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Cape Town and London © Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid
Entitled "Retention", fluid and moving, Kapwani Kiwanga's installation nevertheless immerses us totally, almost to the point of intoxication, in the blue, a blue reminiscent of the indigo cultivated in colonial empires but also of the ultramarine patented by Yves Klein in 1960 under the name International Klein Blue (IKB)... A nice nod to the history of art in a moving tribute to History.

Born in 1978 in Canada to Tanzanian parents, Kapwani Kiwanga has lived and worked in Paris since 2005. Winner of the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2020 and
Winner of the Frieze Prize in 2018, she will represent Canada at the 60th Venice Biennale next year. Venice Biennale, where she made her name
noteworthy in 2022 with an environment composed of large sails in sunset colours and sand sculptures (Terrarium for the exhibition "The Milk of Dreams").

"RESTRAINED" CAPC, MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
7, RUE FERRÈRE, BORDEAUX
UNTIL JANUARY 7, 2024
CAPC-BORDEAUX.FR/AGENDA/EXPOSITIONS/KAPWANI-KIWANGA-RETENUE