Kapwani Kiwanga. Changing States

Premi Joan Miró

Dates

30/04/2026 — 13/09/2026

Place

Fundació Joan Miró

Curated by

Martina Millà, Head of Exhibitions at the Fundació Joan Miró

The first national retrospective by Kapwani Kiwanga, winner of the 2025 Joan Miró Prize, will open on 29 April, supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) and CUPRA. Kiwanga creates a compelling internal architecture that explores the materiality, economic exchanges and geological temporalities that shape our relationship with spaces.

Conceived specifically for the Fundació Joan Miró, the show will fully reflect her explorations on space and control, offering new perspectives for viewing architecture and its power structures from a radically contemporary standpoint.

Kiwanga's work displays an internal structure of exceptional precision and coherence. Her artistic practice organically engages with architecture, as she explores the materiality, resource flows, exchange economies and the power structures that organise territories and bodies. Having conducted research into architectural structures and material circulation systems, in recent years she has broadened this paradigm towards transhuman temporalities, such as geology, thereby enabling an understanding of spaces and systems from scales that go beyond human time.

An anthropologist by training and an artist with an international career, Kiwanga has created a body of work that uses formally refined installations to deconstruct hegemonic narratives and examine the relationships between power, architecture, territory and bodies. The Joan Miró Prize jury recognised her ability to transform complex historical and social processes into poetic and conceptually rigorous forms that are capable of establishing a profound dialogue with Miró's radicalism and Sert's architecture. 

The exhibition will bring together a selection of already created works and a significant proportion of new pieces that the artist has produced specifically for the Barcelona show. It will explore these themes and focus on three key areas: materiality, economic and cultural exchanges and their structural tensions, as well as contemporary crises related to territory, ranging from farming to housing. All these aspects connect directly with the architectural reading that runs through this year's programme, positioning Kiwanga's work as a space from which to reconsider how the world we inhabit is constructed. 

An exhibition in collaboration with TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary.

Online tickets