Kapwani Kiwanga, Joan Miró Award 2025

The Joan Miró Foundation has announced that the French-Canadian artist will be the next star of this biennial award, designed to recognize creators with a critical eye and a practice that connects with Joan Miró's spirit of research and commitment. Kiwanga has been moving between Paris and Berlin for years, and has built a career that combines historical research, social criticism and meticulous attention to form. Her work has been exhibited at institutions such as the New Museum in New York, the MOCA in Toronto and the Serralves Museum in Porto, and she represented Canada at the last Venice Biennale with an installation that addressed the unequal dynamics of global trade through the history of glass beads.

Born in Hamilton, Canada, in 1978, Kiwanga trained in anthropology and later studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. This combination of social science and visual arts marks a practice that is very focused on research. She often starts from stories that have been left on the sidelines, hidden documents or silenced stories, to question dominant discourses and open up alternative ways of thinking. Her works, which combine installations, video, sculpture and performance, do not only seek to make a formal impact, but also to activate questions about how we construct the collective narrative and how power is distributed through architecture, history or the most everyday objects. She herself speaks of "forms of evasion", a way of imagining other possibilities through art.

Flowers For Africa Union Of South Africa, Kapwani Kiwanga, Centre Pompidou. © Kapwani Kiwanga, VEGAP, Barcelona, 2025

The jury, chaired by Marko Daniel, director of the Fundació Joan Miró, made the decision on March 17 after evaluating the projects of five finalists with very diverse backgrounds: Jumana Emil Abboud (Palestine, 1971), Arahmaiani (Indonesia, 1961), Bonnie Devine (Canada, 1952), Christodoulos Panayiotou (Cyprus, 1978) and Kiwanga herself. They all brought unique perspectives, but Kiwanga's proposal stood out for its ability to articulate social and historical processes with great conceptual rigor and remarkable formal coherence.

The jury also included Hoor Al Qasimi, President and Director of the Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates and current curator of the Biennale of Sydney; Pablo Lafuente, Artistic Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro (MAM); Ann-Sofi Noring, former co-director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and current member of the board of governors of the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts; Marie-Hélène Pereira, Chief Curator of Performative Practices at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin; and Jorge Díez, Design Director of CUPRA. All of them highlighted the impact that Kiwanga's installations generate in the exhibition context and the way in which they dialogue with political and cultural issues of global scope.

The Length of the Horizon, Kapwani Kiwanga. © Kapwani Kiwanga, VEGAP, Barcelona, 2025. Foto: David Stjernholm

With this award, endowed with 50,000 euros, Kiwanga will have the opportunity to present a solo exhibition at the Fundació Joan Miró next year. In addition, the prize is linked to an educational project developed in collaboration with the Escola Pau Sans in l'Hospitalet, which seeks to bring contemporary art closer to the school environment through workshops and activities related to the work of the awarded artist.

The Joan Miró Prize is supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), a philanthropic entity with international projection, and the CUPRA brand. In recent editions, this award has consolidated itself as one of the most valued recognitions in the contemporary art scene, not only for its endowment, but also for the impetus it represents for the awarded artists. In the case of Kapwani Kiwanga, the prize not only recognizes a solid and internationally recognized career, but also a way of doing things that connects with Miró's concern to explore new languages and put art at the service of essential questions.

Martina Millà, Marko Daniel, Aurélie Avice, Kapwani Kiwanga, Jorge Diez, Ann-Sofi Noring. Roda de premsa Premi Joan Miró 2025. © Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona. Foto: Davide Camesasca.