Kapwani Kiwanga: BLEED

Kapwani Kiwanga: BLEED features a new site-specific commission by Kapwani Kiwanga, a French and Canadian artist whose research-driven practice spans sculpture, installation, photography, video, and performance. In this exhibition, Kiwanga works through installation and natural dye processes, drawing inspiration from quilting traditions and the symbolism embedded in their designs. Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 W 125th Street, New York, NY 10027. March 11, 2026 — Runs through April 1, 2027. Installed in the museum’s second-floor project gallery, BLEED centers on the “flying geese” quilt motif, a pattern believed to have guided people north along the Underground Railroad. Kiwanga translates this encrypted visual language into black, blue, and crimson undulations, extending Black traditions of knowledge-sharing into a contemporary sculptural form. The work’s materials carry layered historical meaning. Black fabric is produced through oxidized pigment and Atlantic salt water, invoking the transatlantic trade and the sea as witness and keeper of memory. Crimson emerges from pokeberries, tying the work to histories of toxicity, medicine, and self-determination, while indigo references forced labor, West African knowledge systems, and Black ancestral relationships to land. The use of fugitive dyes, which shift over time, gives the installation a built-in impermanence that registers duration and change.