Tarik Kiswanson is a visual artist and poet. He comes from a Palestinian family that exiled from Jerusalem to North Africa and then Jordan before subsequently settling in Sweden in the early 1980s where he was born. Kiswanson spent ten years in London where he studied art before relocating to Paris where he has lived and worked since 2010. He holds four nationalities and speaks and writes in five languages.
Tarik Kiswanson’s work encompasses sculpture, writing, performance, drawing, sound, and video works. For over a decade, he has explored notions of rootlessness, metamorphosis, and memory through his interdisciplinary practice. A legacy of displacement and transformation permeates his works and is indispensable to both their form and the modes of sensing they produce. While retaining an attachment to the intimate and personal, his work speaks to universal concerns and to social and collective histories of rupture, loss, and regeneration. Kiswanson’s oeuvre can be understood as a cosmology of related conceptual families, each exploring variations on themes like refraction, multiplication, disintegration, levitation, and polyphony through their own distinct language.
Tarik Kiswanson was awarded the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2023. His work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at institutions, most recently at The Common Guild Glasgow (2024), Portikus Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2024), Oakville Galleries (2023), Bonniers Konsthall (2023), Salzburger Kunstverein (2023), Museo Tamayo (2023), M HKA-Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (2022), Hallands Konstmuseum (2022) and Carré d’Art-Musée d’art contemporain Nîmes (2021). He has participated in group exhibitions and biennials at institutions such as Centre Pompidou, Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, 16th Lyon Biennial of Contemporary Art, The Ural Biennial, Performa 19 Biennial, Gwangju Biennial, MUDAM-Museum of Contemporary Art Luxembourg, CAC Vilnius, Kunsthalle Münster, and Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial.
Selected Works
Tarik Kiswanson
The Wait (Lucian Ercolani), 2024
wood, fiber glass, resin, paint
203 × 52 × 71 cm
Tarik Kiswanson
Retrieval, 2023
From the series “What We Remembered”
Copper welded with silver
240,4 × 156 × 63 cm
Tarik Kiswanson
The Rupture, 2024
from the series Resins
Resin, British imperial pen, black ink
46 × 28 × 11,5 cm
Tarik Kiswanson
Passing, 2019
Inkjet on cotton, embroidery
220 × 130 cm
Tarik Kiswanson
The Wait, 2023
Resin, fiberglass, paint, stainless steel
270 × 222 × 100 cm
Tarik Kiswanson
Foresight, 2024
George Nakashima’s chair and Adolf Schneck’s chair
91,5 × 72,7 × 50,9 cm
Tarik Kiswanson
1917, 2016
Handwoven stainless steel
265 × 144 × 18 cm
Tarik Kiswanson
The Relief (R. Gabriel, 1945), 2023
“Armoire de sinistrés”, oak, beech, resin, fiberglass, paint
222 × 125 × 53 cm
Tarik Kiswanson
In my blood, 2023
Resin, blood, pigment
40 × 28 × 9 cm
Tarik Kiswanson
Assembled Opacity, 2021
Inkjet on cotton
245 × 150 cm
Tarik Kiswanson
Anamnesis, 2023
Resin, cast with inox object
40 × 28 × 9 cm
Tarik Kiswanson
Shifter, 2016
Copper
300 × 23,5 × 23,5 cm
c|g Exhibitions
Surrounding You | Berlin
23.11.2024–11.01.2025
In the Wake | Madrid
08.03.–11.05.2024
The Reading Room | Berlin
25.11.2023–16.02.2024
Looking Through the Threshold | Berlin
30.04.–11.06.2022
Standing | Berlin
05.03.–21.04.2022
Surging | Berlin
30.04.–10.07.2021
Basel En Madrid | Madrid
17.06.–26.07.2020
So what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? | Madrid
27.02.–01.03.2020
Birth | Madrid
13.09.–09.11.2019
Father Form | Berlin
16.09.–16.11.2017
dispositiv (1) fortlaufend | Berlin
11.03.–15.04.2017
Contact Sheet | Berlin
30.03.–23.04.2016
External Exhibitions
Solo Exhibition
The Rupture | The Common Guild, Glasgow
05.10.–30.11.2024
Solo Exhibition
A Century | Portikus, Frankfurt
08.06.–08.09.2024
Solo Exhibition
Prelude | Oakville Galleries, Oakville
03.02.–01.06.2024
Solo Exhibition
Marcel Duchamp Prize 2023 | Centre Pompidou, Paris
04.10.2023–08.01.2024
Solo Exhibition
Afterwards | Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg
19.07.–10.09.2023
Solo Exhibition
Becoming | Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm
26.04.2023–18.06.2022
Solo Exhibition
Nido | Museo Tamayo, Mexico City
04.04.–18.06.2023
Group Exhibition
Manifesto of Fragility | 16th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art
14.09.–31.12.2022
Solo Exhibition
Anamnesis | M HKA Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp
14.05.–21.08.2022
Solo Exhibition
Mirrorbody | Carré d’art at Nîmes
30.10.2020–24.10.2021
Performance
AS DEEP AS I COULD REMEMBER, AS FAR AS I COULD SEE | Lafayette Anticipations, Fondation Galeries Lafayette, Paris
17.–20.05.2018
Solo Exhibition
Come, come, come of age | Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard, Paris
13.03.–21.04.2018
Solo Exhibition
ONGOING REFLECTION - You, Me, So Many | Collège des Bernardins, Paris
14.10.–18.12.2016
Video
Selected Publications
Tarik Kiswanson, Becoming, Éditions Dilecta & Bonniers Konsthall, 2023
Tarik Kiswanson, Nest, Hallands Konstmuseum and Mousse Publishing, 2022
Tarik Kiswanson, The Window, M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp and JBE Books, 2023
Tarik Kiswanson, Mirrorbody, Distanz Verlag, 2021
Tarik Kiswanson, AS DEEP AS I COULD REMEMBER, AS FAR AS I COULD SEE, Jean Boîte Éditions, 2018