The Museum of Modern Art (MAC) in Bordeaux invited Canadian artist Kapwani Kiwanga to create an installation under the historic vaults of a former warehouse. The creative collaboration resulted in an immersive work on the theme of decoloniality and the past of the building itself.
Since its inception in 1973, SARS has exhibited under its roof the work of the most famous contemporary artists, from Daniel Buren to Louise Bourgeois and from Richard Serra to Keith Haring. This summer, the central space of the museum was transformed by Canadian artist Kapwani Kiwanga. Dense rows of blue ropes descend from the ceiling, forming complex geometric patterns. Visitors walking under the arches of the building can hear the sound of water droplets falling to the ground, amplified by the speakers. This is not only a technical effect: the water actually flows down the ropes and falls into a trench dug in the ground, but in a figurative sense, it seems that the walls themselves made Kapwanga cry.
Rows of colored, thin, light and movable ropes create floating walls that contrast with the stone architecture of the building designed by Claude Deschamps and allow you to re-view the space through a prism of piercing blue. The ropes were handmade in a local factory using ancient techniques. The water for the installation was taken from the Garona River and led into the hall through a network of tiny pipes. Against the backdrop of a massive and motionless stone, the “fluid” installation looks more like a magical portal.
In this interpretation of a work already exhibited in the past in New York and Toronto, the artist looks back at the history of the building that houses the Bordeaux Museum: originally built as a warehouse, it was used in the 19th and 20th centuries to store food brought from the colonies to France. across the Atlantic Ocean. Thus, water is not only tears, but also a confrontation with the colonial imperial past. The exhibition will be open at the museum until January 7, 2024.
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