Tarik Kiswanson. Becoming

April 26th - June 18th, 2023

Bonniers Kunsthallen

By WAC I 4 MAY 2023

Tarik Kiswanson's artistic practice includes sculpture, drawing, performance, sound and video: a wide range of media that allows him to explore themes related to memory, heritage, time and belonging. Uprootedness, regeneration and renewal are the themes that underpin his work and to which he continually returns through the various expressive media he employs.

A central theme of Becoming, curated by Yuvinka Medina, is how the artist explores the idea of levitation as both a psychological state of mind and a physical phenomenon. A moment of presence, a state between the past and the future. We participate in a constant becoming.

The group of monumental sculptures collected under the title Nest (2020-2023) is key to the exhibition at Bonniers Kunsthallen. The works stem from the artist's deep interest in the subject of birth and metamorphosis, often explored in his practice through the prism of migration. Kiswanson directs his attention to the states of transformation that occur in nature, so that his observations become sketches of a primordial form that evokes the idea of shelter and becoming. The exhibition spaces of the institution are painted the same colour as the sculptures, blurring the distinction between art and architecture. Placed at different heights, they give the impression of being nestled into the walls and ceilings, evoking a spatial experience in which the laws of nature seem to be absent.

Kiswanson’s works converse over time and cultural divides. The artist was raised in a Palestinian family that exiled from Jerusalem to North Africa and eventually to Jordan, before settling in Halmstad in the early 1980s. He studied art in London and today live and work in Paris. Kiswanson’s multicultural heritage imbues his entire practice. His works often reflect on the fragmented identities of diaspora and examines what is lost and acquired intergenerationally through migration.

Kiswanson recurrently processes private belongings from his family and the tacit memories these objects possess, like a silver spoon that travelled with the family through exile, or a floorplan of the small rental apartment in Halmstad where he grew up, reconstructed from memory. In works like Concealed, Anamnesis, Respite, In my blood and The accident (2020–2023), these objects have been encased in blocks of transparent resin. For the artist, these hold multiple symbolic values relative to memory, time, heritage, and death.

Despite his nomination for the prestigious French Marcel Duchamp Prize last January and the presence of his work on the international art scene, Becoming is his first major exhibition in Sweden.

TARIK KISWANSON

Halmstad (Sweden), 1986. He lives and works in Paris, and periods in Amman, Jordan. He received his Master in Fine Arts from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Paris (2014) and his Bachelor in Fine Arts from Central Saint Martins – University of Arts London (2010).

Among his latest exhibitions are Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut (2022), MHKA – Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerpen (2022), Hallands Konstmuseum, Halmstad (2022), La Biennale de Lyon (2022), Carré d’Art – Musée d’Art Contemporain de Nîmes, France (2021), Ural Biennial (2019), Performa Biennial (2019) and Centre Pompidou (2018).

HOME