Capture Photography Festival, 2020

Kapwani Kiwanga
Counter-Illumination

For the 2020 Capture Photography Festival, Franco-Canadian, Paris-based artist, Kapwani Kiwanga created Counter-Illumination (2020), a site-specific commission. This work is featured on the façade of the Dal Grauer building, a modernist power structure, partly obscuring its dominant glass façade.

Kiwanga’s practice queries embedded power structures and encourages what she describes as “exit strategies” in order to visualize alternatives and negotiate a different future. In her recent work, Kiwanga has been interested in surveillance and how it manifests itself in legislation and architecture. She is equally interested in ways individuals and groups counter forced visibility and reconnaissance through cloaking techniques whether physical, behavioural, or digital. Kiwanga’s still life photograph, Counter-Illumination, comprises objects and materials that are related to seeing and obscuring: curtains, blinds, mirror, and glass. This image, covering a major portion of the building’s façade, is in direct dialogue with the edifice which is supporting it, evoking questions of visibility, transparency, and their use in surveillance and control.

The Dal Grauer public art installation is made possible due to the partnership of BC Hydro. Sponsored by the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association.

Image: Rachel Topham Photography