Tarik Kiswanson

For two decades, Tarik Kiswanson has engaged with themes of loss, memory, and regeneration through an expansive interdisciplinary practice. His works are shaped by legacies of displacement and transformation, which are essential to both their form and the modes of sensing they produce. While retaining an attachment to the intimate and personal, his practice extends to address universal concerns and broader historical, political and social narratives of rupture and reconstruction. His art engages with the architecture of the spaces in which it is exhibited, transcending conventional modes of representation to create holistic experiences.

Tarik Kiswanson’s practice engages with material culture and the mnemonic capacities of objects, interrogating the enduring aftermath of war and movement across varied historical and geopolitical contexts. His projects examine how artefacts produced during or in the aftermath of trauma can be recontextualized as sites of resilience and collective historical consciousness. By exploring the language of objects, Kiswanson’s archaeology of memory gives voice to the unspeakable. Rather than reconciling the contradictions of our History, he makes them visible, underscoring their reverberations across generations and geographies.

Tarik Kiswanson comes from a Palestinian family that was exiled from Jerusalem, by way of Tripoli and Amman, before finally settling in Halmstad, Sweden, where he was born in 1986. He spent ten years in London, where he studied art, before relocating to Paris, where he has lived and worked since 2010. Kiswanson received an MFA from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (2014) and a BFA from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London (2010). His work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions all over the world, most recently at Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (2025), Fundação Iberê Camargo (2025), Kunsthalle Portikus (2024), Bonniers Konsthall (2023), Salzburger Kunstverein (2023), Museo Tamayo (2023) and Carré d’Art-Musée d’art contemporain (2021). He has participated in group exhibitions and biennials at institutions such as the Centre Pompidou, the 15th Baltic Triennial and the Lyon Biennial of Contemporary Art.

Tarik Kiswanson is a member of the scientific committee of the Édouard Glissant Art Fund.

Biography

Selected Works

Tarik Kiswanson

A Century, 2024
Walking sticks
100 × 90 × 90 cm

Tarik Kiswanson

Foresight, 2024
George Nakashima’s chair and Adolf Schneck’s chair
91,5 × 72,7 × 50,9 cm

Tarik Kiswanson

The Rupture, 2024
Resin, British imperial pen, black ink
46 × 28 × 11,5 cm

Tarik Kiswanson

Incoming, 2020
Collage
26 × 16,5 cm

Tarik Kiswanson

Retrieval, 2023
Copper welded with silver
240,4 × 156 × 63 cm

Tarik Kiswanson

The Wait, 2023
Resin, fiberglass, paint, stainless steel
270 × 222 × 100 cm

Tarik Kiswanson

The Wait (L.Ercolani), 2024
wood, fiber glass, resin, paint
203 × 52 × 71 cm

Tarik Kiswanson

Passing, 2019
Inkjet on cotton, embroidery
220 × 130 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

Radiate and Fade Away | Berlin

01.03.–12.04.2025

Surrounding You | Berlin

23.11.2024–15.02.2025

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 Relief | Institut suédois, Paris

23.10.2025–11.01.2026

Solo Exhibition

Limiar | Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo

03.09.2025–25.01.2026

Special installation

Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennale | Abu Dhabi

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

News

Biennial

Tarik Kiswanson and Lúcia Koch at the Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial

Press

Spotlight in ARTFORUM

Prize

Tarik Kiswanson Winner of the Henraux Sculpture Prize

Solo Exhibition

A Century at Portikus, Frankfurt am Main

Residency

Residency at the Villa Albertine New York City

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