Working across a wide range of medium, from sculpture to drawing, writing, performance, sound, and video works, his practice examines subjects related to memory, heritage, time, birth, loss and belonging. Notions of rootlessness, regeneration, and renewal lies at the core of his practice. A central theme in the exhibition, which includes several new and a selection of significant earlier works, is the notion of levitation, which is explored as a physical phenomenon and a mental state.
Kiswanson was raised in a Palestinian family that exiled from Jerusalem to North Africa and eventually to Jordan, before settling in Halmstad in the early 1980s. He studied art in London and today live and work in Paris. Kiswanson’s multicultural heritage imbues his entire practice. His works often reflect on the fragmented identities of diaspora and examines what is lost and acquired intergenerationally through migration.
My identity has been defined by several cultures, my abstract works stem from my own condition as a first-generation immigrant, shaped in the aftermath of displacement. Throughout my life, I have used sculpture and writing to explore transitory and interstitial states of the human condition. – Tarik Kiswanson
BIOGRAPHY
Tarik Kiswanson (b. 1986) lives and works in Paris, and periods in Amman, Jordan. He received his Master in Fine Arts from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Paris (2014) and his Bachelor in Fine Arts from Central Saint Martins – University of Arts London (2010).
Kiswanson’s latest exhibitions include Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut (2022), MHKA – Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerpen (2022), Hallands Konstmuseum, Halmstad (2022) and Carré d’Art – Musée d’Art Contemporain de Nîmes, France (2021), Ural Biennial (2019), Performa Biennial (2019) and Centre Pompidou (2018). He is currently exhibiting at La Biennale de Lyon (2022) and has an upcoming solo exhibition at Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg in 2023.
Kiswanson has published numerous exhibition catalogs and collections of poems, the latest was published in 2022 by Hallands Konstmuseum/Mousse Publishing and M HKA/JBE Books. His work is represented in several collections, to name a few, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Hallands Konstmuseum, Halmstad and the Public Agency of Art, Sweden.
