Kiluanji Kia Henda
Born in Luanda / Angola, 1979.
Currently lives and works between Luanda and Lisbon.
He employs a surprising sense of humour in his work, which often hones in on themes of identity, politics, and perceptions of postcolonialism and modernism in Africa.
2008
Kiluanji is an autodidact, whose springboard comes from growing up in a household of photography enthusiasts. His conceptual edge was sharpened by immersing himself in music, avant-garde theatre, and collaborating with a collective of artists in Luanda.
Exhibitions
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Affective Utopia
Kadist Fondation, Paris
2019 -
Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design
The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; The Albuquerque Museum, NM; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX, USA
2017 -
Constellations
Tate Gallery, Liverpool, UK
2016 -
Museum (science) fictions Museum ON/OFF
Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
2016 -
Kabbo Ka Mwuala (The Girls Basket)
National Galley of Zimbabwe, Harare
2016 -
Making Africa
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain
2015 -
New Man – Homem Novo
Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria
2013 -
Luanda Pop_Check List
52a Bienalle of Venice, African pavilion, Venice, Italy
2007
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The Island of Venus
HANGAR Centro de Investigação Artística, Lisbon, Portugal
2018 -
Another Day of Life
Tate Gallery, Liverpool, UK
2017 -
Fuckin‘Globo III
Hotel Globo, Luanda, Angola
2017 -
The Incantation of the Disquieting Muse
Savvy Contemporary, Berlin, Germany
2016 -
The Divine Comedy
Museum of African Art - Smithsonian Institution, Washington, USA
2015 -
Producing the Common
11th Dakar Biennale – Dak’Art, Dakar
2014 -
There is always a cup of sea to sail in
29a Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil
2010 -
Luanda Triennial
Luanda, Angola
2007
2008
« It is almost impossible to talk about Kiluanji Kia Henda without linking Kiluanji Kia Henda the artist to Kiluanji Kia Henda the individual. His biography is, at least chronologically, too closely connected with the most significant events in Angola since its independence, only four years before he was born.
Kia Henda often cites autobiographical moments and frequently builds this association between his artistic investigation, his way of thinking, and his upbringing in a context of constant change and great uncertainty.
He lived the first twenty-five years of his life in a country at war, although he claims to have spent all of that time in Luanda, relatively safe from the conflict – although not from its effects.
2008
2008
As a taxidermist of Human Nature, Kiluanji Kia Henda’s work is the action of stuffing long-dead ideologies, regimes and long-lost utopian futures in order to keep a memory of past dreams – but also to reflect on the caricaturising of this inherent disconnect between ideology and reality. He uses irony to offset the nostalgia of this dissection of the past and its lingering effects on the present.
2008
2008
Henda’s work often reflects this cleavage between dreams, aspirations and the practical aspects of modern society within the context of a post-independence, post-war, post-communist, post-truth society, in which it seems only humour can achieve reconciliation. »
Bruno Leitão, (excerts), 2019 in Atlantica