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Shady

Kapwani Kiwanga
Shady, 2018
Shadecloth and steel
Work: 400 x 1000 x 300 cm

Shady is a large-scale sculptural work made for the open air. A series of five metal frames; two meters wide by four meters high, are assembled into an imposing construction and arranged in a slightly curving line. The structure is commanding and disrupts circulation yet is a covered in variations of transparent coloured polyethylene fabric which counters this rigidity. One can look through the wall. At some points openings in the fabric’s weave invites one to consider the possibility of transgressing the barrier. Various layers of fabric are supposed on one another to push this exploration of porosity further. The sculpture is also punctuated by two overhang sails, which depart from the top of the structure and continue to the ground at an angle creating two tunnels, or passageways. This sculpture addresses questions of social barriers, obstruction to movement, architectural and social structures of exclusion. These questions are evoked not only through the sculpture’s scale and the hard material of the metal structure but also through the material that is wrapped around the structure. The fabric in question is shade cloth. This particular fabric is used in large-scale industrial agriculture. It allows farmers to cultivate crops that would not survive otherwise by creating a microcosm of growth. Shade cloth, depending on the colour and the tightness of the weave, allows varying qualities of light to pass through. Kiwanga first used this material in an exhibition in South Africa at the Goodman Gallery where I was interested in land and its use in the colonial project. The shade cloth speaks to the appropriation of land for farming from indigenous communities and the manipulation of the natural environment for cash cropping and economic gain. This situation is by no means confined to the African continent but is a worldwide phenomenon. Kiwanga has created monochrome pieces in the past in which shade cloth was stretched over it as if it were a canvas. For this project she aimed to work with this simple yet politically charged fabric in a three-dimension space.