Kiluanji Kia Henda

Kiluanji Kia Henda (Angola, 1979) lives and works in Luanda. In his practice, he uses art as a means of transmitting and constructing history, exploring photography, video, performance, installations, object-sculpture, music and avant-garde theatre as ways of materializing fictional narratives and shifting facts to different temporalities and struggles. Using humor and irony, the artist represents the complexity of themes such as identity, politics, and perceptions of post-independence and modernity in Africa. Working in perverted complicity with historical legacy, he sees the process of appropriation and manipulation of public spaces and structures as different constructions of the collective memory.
His work was included or commissioned over  the last years for: 60th Venice Biennale; Serpentine Galleries, London; Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin; Centre George Pompidou, Paris; Migros Museum, Zurich; International Film Festival of Rotterdam; 2nd Lubumbashi Biennale; 12th Gwangju Biennale; Tate Modern, London; Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao; 3rd New Museum Triennial, New York; 11th Biennale of Dakar; Bergen Assembly – 1st Bergen Biennial; Tamayo Museum, Mexico DC; 29th São Paulo Biennale (2010); 52nd Venice Biennale – African Pavilion (2007), and Luanda Triennial, Luanda (2007), among others. In 2012, Kia Henda won the National Prize for Culture and Arts, awarded by the Angolan Ministry of Culture, and in 2014 he was selected among 100 Leading Global Thinkers by the US magazine Foreign Politics. In 2017, he won the Frieze Artist Award and in 2019 he was selected for the Unlimited Basel project.