The Body as a Political Tool
A conversation between Grada Kilomba and Paul Goodwin. Artist Grada Kilomba and curator Paul Goodwin discuss the artistic practices of interrupting and transforming dominant spaces, by creating new visual narratives centered around the black body and the politics of in/visibility. Interdisciplinary artist and writer, Grada Kilomba develops a research focusing on memory, trauma, race, gender, and the post-colonial condition. She is best known for her unconventional writing and her subversive use of artistic practices, bringing text into performance, and giving body, voice, and image to her own writings. To approach “the colonial wound,” as the artist says, she intentionally creates a hybrid space between the academic and the artistic languages, to explore new formats of decolonizing knowledge and narrative, bringing a new, experimental, and compelling voice into contemporary art and discourse. Her recent solo exhibitions include: “Secrets to tell” The Power Plant, Toronto (2018); “Speaking the Unspeakable” Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg (2018); “The Most Beautiful Language” Municipal Galleries of Lisbon (2017/ 2018); “Secrets to Tell” MAAT, Lisbon (2017/ 2018). Her work has been featured in major international events and group exhibitions such as: “Journeys with the initiated” e-flux, New York (2018); “From Silence to Memory” Paço Das Artes, São Paulo (2018); “InContext: this past was waiting for me” Goodman Gallery, Cape Town (2018); “First Things, First: Decolonial Options” WdW Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2017); “Always Decolonise!” 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Marrakech (2017); “Speaking Feminisms” Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (2017); 10th Berlin Biennale (2018); Documenta 14, Kassel (2017); 32nd Biennale of São Paulo (2016), Rauma Biennale Balticum, Finland (2016). Grada Kilomba is the winner of the Grant Award for Emerging Talents by International Film Festival Rotterdam (2017). Paul Goodwin is an independent curator, urban theorist and researcher based in London. His curatorial, research and writing projects extend across the transdisciplinary fields of contemporary art and urbanism with a particular focus on African diaspora artists and visual cultures. Recent exhibitions include: “ Transfigurations: Curatorial and Artistic Research in a Age of Migrations” , MACBA Barcelona, 2014, “ Ghosts” , Hangar: Centre for Art & Research, Lisbon 2016, “ Chloe Dewe Mathews: In Search of Frankenstein” , 2016 (3-D Foundation Verbier and British Library, London 2018), “ Untitled: Art on the Conditions of Our Time” , New Art Exchange, Nottingham, UK, 2017 and Kettles Yard, Cambridge 2020. Recent publications include ‘Confessions of a Recalcitrant Curator’ In: The Persistence of Taste: Art, Museums and Everyday Life After Bourdieu , (Routledge), 2018; ‘Curating in Angola at Home and Abroad’ In: Atlantica: Contemporary Art in Angola and its Diaspora (Hangar Books) 2019 and ‘The (Trans-national) Measurement of (Black) Presence’ In: The Measurement of Presence , Netherlands Pavilion, 58th Venice Biennale, 2019. He is currently professor and UAL Chair of Contemporary Art & Urbanism and Director of TrAIN (Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation) at University of the Arts London.