collection Digressions
Kapwani Kiwanga
Captures Éditions
French, English
Softcover
32 pages
215 x 135 mm
2017
ISBN 9782955877814
In a singular career leading from anthropology to the visual arts, she has brought to light unexplored interspaces between fiction and documentary, science and magic, politics and the poetic, and taken advantage of her training in the social sciences to develop experimental projects with herself in the role of researcher. Her method consists in devising systems and protocols that act as filters for observation of different cultures and their capacity to mutate.
Here she addresses the two interconnected projects making up her exhibition at the Ferme du Buisson: the magic powers of plants in a context of political and social resistance, and in particular their use by Kinjeketile, a healer who urged the peoples of East Africa to rise up against the German colonial regime; and the concept of Ujamaa, the basis of Julius Nyerere’s pan-African socialism. Kapwani Kiwanga also returns to reactivation of the past as a means of studying the present, and the importance of speech as a tool for transmitting knowledge and stimulating action.
(source: https://www.lendroit.org/catalogue/fiches/2910-Virginie-Yassef)
About the Artist
Working with sound, film, performance, and objects, Kapwani Kiwanga (b. 1978, Canada) relies on extensive research to transform raw information into investigations of historical narratives and their impact on political, social, and community formation. The Paris-based artist’s work focuses on sites specific to Africa and the African diaspora, examining how certain events expand and unfold into popular and folk narratives, and revealing how these stories take shape in objects and oral histories. Trained as an anthropologist, Kiwanga performs this role in her artistic practice, using historical information to construct narratives about groups of people. Kiwanga is not only invested in the past but also the future, telling Afrofuturist stories and creating speculative dossiers from future civilisations to reflect on the impact of historical events.
(source: https://www.lespressesdureel.com/EN/auteur.php?id=3153)
About the Collection
Initiated in 2017 by Julie Pellegrin and the team of the Contemporary Art Center La Ferme du Buisson in collaboration with the Captures editions, Digressions is a collection of interviews (bilingual French / English) which accompanies the programming of the Art Center. Through conversations with the guest artists, the notebooks give access behind the scenes of the projects and testify to the reflections, research, methodologies and sometimes doubts or trial and error that nourish a work process. By giving the floor to the artists, the whole collection makes very singular voices heard which nevertheless resonate with each other to explore shared questions around the performance and the writing of the exhibition, the commitment corporal and political, of the decompartmentalization of disciplines.
For each issue, there is a change in color of the cover paper with or without embossing, distinguishing the publications in relation to the artistic project. The inside pages are printed in a pantone tone and the transition to the English language is materialized by a double-page image resulting from the research work. Postcards from the exhibitions are printed and inserted randomly into the notebooks like bookmarks. The elegant and dynamic layout by Claire Moreux marries the intricacies of reflection by inviting the reader to navigate, literally, in the text.
(source: https://www.lendroit.org/catalogue/fiches/2910-Virginie-Yassef)
About the Publisher
Captures’ initial priority was to publish artists’ books, an association artist, graphic designer and publisher, free of all constraints. Subsequently, with the constant desire to prioritize the artist’s voice, uncover research, differences and debates on the question of art, other collections were born: monographs, collective works and interviews.
captures-editions.com
(source: https://captures-editions.com/en/)
