Tarik Kiswanson

Tarik Kiswanson, born 19 July 1986, Halmstad, is a Swedish, French, Jordanian and Palestinian visual artist. He lives and works in Paris.

Early life and education
Tarik Kiswanson was born in Halmstad (Sweden) in 1986. He comes from a Palestinian family who was exiled from Jerusalem to North Africa and later to Sweden in the early 1980s where he was born. When his parents arrived at the immigration office, their original name, al-Kiswani was changed to Kiswanson. Tarik Kiswanson spent his childhood between Sweden and Jordan, where a large part of his family lives.

At the age of 17, he moved to London to study at Central Saint Martin’s School of Art. In 2010, he graduated with a Bachelor in Fine Arts and moved to Paris to continue his studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris and graduated in 2014.

Work
For over a decade, Tarik Kiswanson has explored notions of rootlessness, regeneration, metamorphosis, and memory through his complex and 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. The artist's Palestinian family left Jerusalem for North Africa and Jordan before subsequently settling in Sweden, where he was born in 1986. Over the years, Kiswanson's artistic inquiry has retained an attachment to the intimate and personal while simultaneously speaking to universal concerns relative to the human condition and to social and collective histories of rupture, loss and regeneration.

He is the winner of the 2023 Marcel Duchamp Prize.

Solo exhibitions (selection)

 * Henraux International Scultpure Prize 2024, Henraux Foundation
 * A Century, Portikus (2024)
 * Marcel Duchamp Prize 2023, Centre Pompidou (2023)
 * Afterwards, Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzbourg, Austria (2023)
 * Becoming, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden (2023)
 * Nido, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (2023)
 * Anamnesis, M HKA - Musée d'Art contemporain d'Anvers (2022)
 * Nest, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beyrouth, Lebanon (2022)
 * Nest, Hallands Konstmuseum, Halmstad, Sweden (2022)
 * Surging, carlier I gebauer, Berlin, Germany (2021)
 * Mirrorbody, Carré d'Art, Nîmes, France (2020)
 * Come of age, Fondation d'entreprise Ricard, Paris, France (2018)
 * Father Form, carlier | gebauer, Berlin, Germany (2017)
 * Ongoing Reflection, Collège des Bernardins, Paris, France (2016)

Group exhibitions (selection)

 * Form of the surrounding futures, Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (2023)
 * Elmgreen & Dragset: READ, Kunsthalle Praha, Praha, Czechia (2023)
 * Manifesto of fragility, 16e Biennale d'art contemporain de Lyon, France (2022)
 * Living In This Exquisite Corpse, Ambassade de France, Berne, Switzerland (2021)
 * In The Open, The Common Guild, Glasgow, United-Kingdom (2021)
 * Hi-storytelling, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hambourg, Germany (2021)
 * Immortality, Ural biennial, Ekaterinburg, Rusia (2019)
 * AS DEEP AS I COULD REMEMBER, AS FAR AS I COULD SEE, Performa 19 biennial, New York, United-States (2019)
 * Tainted Love Villa Arson, Nice, France (2019)
 * Today will happen, Biennale de Gwangju, South Korea (2018)

Publications

 * Exhibition catalogues
 * Nest, Hallands Konstmuseum, Mousse Publishing, 2022
 * Mirrorbody, Carré d’Art - Musée d’Art contemporain de Nîmes, DISTANZ, 2021


 * Poetry books
 * The Window, JBE Books, 2022

Artist's book

 * Becoming, Dilecta, 2023