INHABIT #6 // Syowia Kyambi
Foto: Liz Hickok
February – April 2022
Syowia Kyambi is a Kenyan-German artist who works with questions of gender, memory, and identity in the context of colonial history and cultural power structures.
Her works deal with the way the present is influenced by historical constructs and narratives, and how the past shapes our imagination and ideas of the future. The question of what gets remembered and archived and which stories about things, bodies, and the past are accepted as the norm, is the point of departure for her artistic practice and where her cultivation of alternative stories that challenge normative history begins. The performative dimension of her installations is thus a key element, with the body negotiating the construction of the self in the context of postcolonial experience.
During her residency with INHABIT, Kyambi will develop a performance-installation work that engages collective memory in Frankfurt’s public spaces and archives. She is especially interested in audiences’ physical responses to her (site-specific) performances with regard to collective memory.
Biography
Syowia Kyambi studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA, 2002) and received her MFA from the Transart Institute in 2020. She has held fellowships from the Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research (2018–2020), Uniarts Helsinki (2018), the Smithsonian (2017), and the Art in Global Health Project of the Wellcome Trust Fund (2013). Previous residencies include PRAKSIS (Norway, 2019), Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research (Italy and Mexico, 2018), Helsinki International Artist Program (Finland, 2018), Delfina Foundation (Great Britain, 2016), and Iaspis (Sweden, 2013). Her work has been exhibited internationally, including in the Dakar Biennial,Senegal; MARKK, Hamburg; Ostrale Biennial, Dresden; National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare; EVA International Biennial, Limerick; WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; Konstall Lund, Lund and the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design, Stockholm.
