Kiluanji Kia Henda and Dariel Cobb discuss A City Called Mirage

About

Kiluanji Kia Henda (born 1979, Luanda, Angola) is a Luanda-based artist, working with photography, video and performance. His work has been exhibited at institutions including Tate Liverpool, 2017; SCAD Museum, Savannah, 2016; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2016; National Museum of African Art – Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 2015; Tamayo Museum, Mexico, 2012; and Arnolfini, Bristol, 2012. He has participated in the 2015 Triennial: Surround Audience, New Museum, New York; Dakar Biennale, 2014; Bienal de São Paulo, 2007; Venice Biennale, 2007, and the Luanda Triennale, 2007. He is the winner of 2017 Frieze Artist Award and the 2012 National Prize of Art and Culture, awarded by the Ministry of Culture, Luanda.

Dariel Cobb is a PhD candidate in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture at MIT. Her work examines modern art and architecture across the Black Atlantic, with a particular focus on plastic synthesis between art and architecture, the influence of Négritude on expressions of nationalism, and the entanglement of modern architecture and “tropicality” in the postcolony. Her dissertation explores post-colonial expressions of national identity in Francophone West Africa, and the discursive milieu which influenced creative exploration at mid-century, including the work of ethnographers, writers, and artists alongside architects. Dariel has written about Afrofuturism and the technological body in Africa; the climate discourse in modern architecture; juridical definitions of space; the relationship of nomadic peoples to built space, and the various ways “built” is defined. Her recent publications range from the work of Angolan photographers and the design of urban Luanda, to the discipline of creative labor and the economics of architecture as work.

This program is supported, in part, by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Dennis Elliott Founder’s Fund, Greenwich Collection Ltd., New York City Council District 34, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and Tauck Ritzau Innovative Philanthropy.