Spring 2023 Features Kapwani Kiwanga and More at MOCA Toronto
Kapwani Kiwanga, Maya-Bantu, 2019. The Moody Center for the Arts, Houston (USA), 2021. @Photo Nash Baker. Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, and London. ©ADAGP, Paris / SOCAN, Montreal (2022)
Spring 2023 at MOCA Toronto
MOCA Toronto is delighted to present artists and collectives who create very different kinds of installation and sculptural work – including many artworks commissioned specifically for MOCA’s spaces – using a wide variety of physical media such as metal, concrete, recycled consumer goods and plants.
Kapwani Kiwanga, Vumbi, 2012, video still. Courtesy the artist; Galerie Poggi, Paris; Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin; and Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, Johannesburg, and London. ©ADAGP, Paris / SOCAN, Montreal (2022)
Kapwani Kiwanga Remediation
February 24 – July 23, 2023
The first major survey exhibition in Canada of Canadian-French artist Kapwani Kiwanga focuses on botany and resistance. For her exhibition at MOCA, Kiwanga presents five new commissions, featuring video and large-scale sculptural installations that involve organic materials and methods of filtration. Through this curated selection, Kiwanga expands on her research into how botany has long held a relationship to exploitation and acts of resistance, and how plant life has and may intervene in the rejuvenation of contaminated environments.
Athena Papadopoulos, The Smurfette, Installation view, Emalin, London. Courtesy the artist and Emalin, London. Photography: Plastiques.
Athena Papadopoulos The New Alphabet
February 24 – April 30, 2023
Susan For Susan Trade Show
February 24 – April 30, 2023
Two exhibitions are presented in dialogue: Susan For Susan’s playful composition of furniture propositions, and UK-based Canadian artist Athena Papadopoulos’s two bodies of sculptural work collectively titled The New Alphabet.
Athena Papadopoulos’ richly dense sculptural works, made from found materials such as clothing, cushions, plush toys, chains, wigs and textiles, create melodramatic characters that sit on the edge of the glamourous and the grotesque. For MOCA, Papadopoulos has produced two series of sculptures shaped by the isolating experience of the last two years and an ever present concern that these artworks may never be seen. Bones for Time takes disused hospital and wool blankets to trace aspects of the artist’s body, resulting in a variety of alphabetically categorized objects. In Trees with No Sound, Papadopoulos’ unwanted furniture, clothing and stuffed objects are transformed into sculptures that reference art history and literature, as well as biblical and religious stories.
Susan For Susan, the collaborative design practice of John and Kevin Watts, employs a visual language that draws on industrial materials and their fabrication methods, balancing rationale with experimentation to explore the distinction between sculpture and product design. Their presentation at MOCA arranges a set of design propositions for an apartment interior, suspended from a gantry system. Juxtaposing the raw with the polished, the sterile with pops of colour or subtle moments of humour, they imbue playfulness into functional approaches and help humanize the industrial rigour of their objects.
Serkan Özkaya, ni4niv.2, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Galerist, Istanbul.
Serkan Özkaya ni4ni v.3
February 24 – April 30, 2023
Serkan Özkaya’s compelling installation, ni4ni v.3, is a poignant site-specific experience that encourages audiences to explore ideas of time, perception and self within the space.
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