Donna Kukama

Donna Kukama

BornNationalityBased In
1981South AfricanKöln
Biography

Donna Kukama is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice engages performance art as a tool for creative research. Her work presents institutions, monuments, gestures of protest, rumors, and fleeting moments that are as real as they are fictitious. Shifting between performance, video, text, sound, and multimedia installations, her practice takes on a form that is experimental, applying methods that are deliberately undisciplined. She uses performance as a strategy that allows her to invent as well as to apply methods that are outside the canon of what is predictable or expected. She questions how histories are narrated and subverts how value systems are constructed, often centering methods perspectives that originate from the Global South. Through her practice, she weaves major with minor aspects of histories, introducing fragile and brief moments of ‘strangeness’ within sociopolitical settings. Her performances are to be understood as gestures of poetry with a political intent and an urgent need to destabilize existing canons regarding the ways we look at reality. For Kukama, performance becomes a strategy for inserting foreign ‘undocumented’ voices and presences into history by occupying sites and territories that remember less-told stories. ...

Selected Artworks
and the same soil, this very restless soil, wishes it could spew out all the blood shed
Donna Kukama
and the same soil, this very restless soil, wishes it could spew out all the blood shed, 2019
162.5 x 167.5cm
The rain cloud gathered, knowing how their tears would become a violent storm in waiting
Donna Kukama
The rain cloud gathered, knowing how their tears would become a violent storm in waiting, 2019
218.5 x 189cm
We can't (and won't) live without our lives
Donna Kukama
We can't (and won't) live without our lives, 2019
89 x 124 x 4.5cm
uhelele, uhelele (part of humming series) #1
Donna Kukama
uhelele, uhelele (part of humming series) #1, 2019
49 x 34cm
Black Fan
Donna Kukama
Black Fan, 2018
38 x 29cm
364 and still counting
Donna Kukama
364 and still counting, 2016
29 x 21cm
TO BE ANNOUNCED
The soil remembers that we are its doorless inhabitants
Donna Kukama
The soil remembers that we are its doorless inhabitants, 2019
200 x 144cm
364 and still counting
Donna Kukama
364 and still counting, 2016
The day vanilla decided she was a spice
Donna Kukama
The day vanilla decided she was a spice, 2020
172 x 172cm
how powerful you must have been to be wanted bloody dead dead dead
Donna Kukama
how powerful you must have been to be wanted bloody dead dead dead, 2020
137.5 x 108.5cm
Not Yet (And Nobody Knows Why Not)
Donna Kukama
Not Yet (And Nobody Knows Why Not), 2008
Sizobaloya kwa Mai-Mai
Donna Kukama
Sizobaloya kwa Mai-Mai, 2019
175 x 144 x 5cm
Shadows of fallen fists fighting for fake traumas
Donna Kukama
Shadows of fallen fists fighting for fake traumas, 2020
133 x 100 x 5cm
To erase oneself over and over and over again
Donna Kukama
To erase oneself over and over and over again, 2022
42 x 26.5cm
Revolution
Donna Kukama
Revolution, 2017
70 x 57 x 0.6cm
Situation
Donna Kukama
Situation, 2017
36 x 35 x 0.6cm
and then we dreamt of a million uprisings and downfalls
Donna Kukama
and then we dreamt of a million uprisings and downfalls, 2018
65 x 45cm
Even in their kindest kindest kindness, they were violent (vol. 1)
Donna Kukama
Even in their kindest kindest kindness, they were violent (vol. 1), 2023
129 x 211 x 6.5cm
Why You for Me?
Donna Kukama
Why You for Me?, 2023
128 x 208 x 4.5cm
Gallery Representation
Biennals
Belgrade Biennale2018 - Belgrade
Sao Paolo Biennial2016
Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art2015 - Moscow
Berlin Biennial2014 - Berlin
Venice Biennial2013 - Venice
La Biennale de Lyon2013 - Lyon
La Biennale de Lyon2011 - Lyon
Dak’Art2006 - Dakar
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