woocommerce-shipping-per-product domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131complianz-gdpr domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131An abundance of suggestive materialities mark Kapwani Kiwanga\u2019s solo exhibition Remediation<\/em> at MOCA Toronto. These plentiful textures, surfaces, and elements are revealed in successive turns that are at once inviting and curious. Every installation on view is a world onto itself\u2014telling of a contemplative exploration of material histories and their social effects\u2014but all convey Kiwanga\u2019s interest in the relationship between humans and their environments. The exhibition connects new, site-responsive works with existing projects and adaptations of ongoing installations that, together, point to Kiwanga\u2019s expansive practice and continuing research into the divergent means by which flora and botanicals are concurrently exploited by industry and empire and engaged or reclaimed within acts of resistance and survival. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nThe exhibition opens on the main floor of MOCA with Elliptical Field<\/em> (2023), a large-scale textile consisting of a light-yellow furred wall in front of which are suspended two oval rings almost fully draped in the same thick, plush material. The rings\u2019 coverings have been meticulously trimmed\u2014one on a bias so as to expose the bottom of the ellipsoid and the other straight across at the top, creating an opening to peer through and beyond. Texturally, the forms beckon to be touched and felt, even caressed. The lure is tactile, but the purpose is narrative. Made of sisal from Agave sisalana<\/em> fibre, Elliptical Field <\/em>relates thelegacy of this specific plant and its relationship with Tanzania, the home of Kiwanga\u2019spaternal family. Sisal is commonly used to make rope and twine and remains one of Tanzania\u2019s major exports. Agave sisalana<\/em>, however, is not native to Africa and was illegally transported to the continent from Central America by German plantation owners, who cultivated it in considerable quantity for personal gain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
From here, the exhibition unfolds through sustained concern for how raw materials speak across time and space and how deeply they have been implicated within globalized economies and extractionist policies. And yet, each work is a rebuttal to and rejection of interpreting socio-spatial entanglements and place-based resources solely through the lens of markets and capital. What Kiwanga offers instead are complex social, political, epistemic, and material ecosystems. These concerns read clearly in works such as The Marias<\/em> (2020), an installation of two paper sculptures simulating peacock-flower plants, set on bright-yellow petal-shaped plinths and surrounded by walls painted in the same vibrant colour. This poisonous plant was used by enslaved women in the colonial era for its abortive properties in order to defend reproductive agency and protect kin from being born into subjugation. The paper-folding technique\u2014a popular eighteenth- and nineteenth-century hobby for affluent women whose wealth was likely born of slavery\u2014borrowed to make the works narrates from a very different class and gender position, articulating the extent to which social conditions structure living relations, be they plant, animal, or both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the centre of the exhibition stand three substantial sentinels whose voluminous plastic forms reference Wardian cases, precursors to modern terrariums and aquariums and made to shelter and display plant specimens imported to Europe from overseas. The vivariums, containing nothing but air, appear at the ready to preserve not a single plant or flower but futures manifested by liberatory practices that might recalibrate human\u2013nature relations. Empty in one sense but full of possibility in another, Kiwanga\u2019s arrangements, here and throughout the exhibition, call forth for renewed ecologies informed by mutuality and conviviality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A writer and curator based in Toronto, Noa Bronstein often focuses on issues around space-making and how artists disrupt and subvert systems, including those registering across social, political, and economic structures. Bronstein is currently the executive director of Gallery TPW (Toronto).<\/p>\n\n\n