Grada Kilomba is a Berlin-based Portuguese artist, whose work draws on memory, trauma and post-colonialism. Using performance, staged reading, video, photography, large scale sculptural and sonic installations, the artist interrogates concepts of knowledge, violence and repetition. Kilomba’s work is best known for her subversive practice of storytelling, in which she creates a poetic and immersive imagery, giving body, voice, form and movement to her own writings. “What stories are told? How are they told? Where are they told? And told by whom?” are constant questions in Kilomba’s body of work.
Kilomba holds a distinguished Doctorate in Philosophy from the Freie Universität Berlin, and in 2023 the artist was awarded a Doctorate Honoris Causa by University of ISPA, Lisbon. She has been a guest Professor at several international universities, such as Humboldt University - Berlin; the University of Legon, Accra; and the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, among others. Kilomba has resided at the prominent Maxim Gorki Theatre, in Berlin, for several years, where she developed the acclaimed project ‘Kosmos2’, an artistic and political intervention with refugee artists. She was the co-curator of the 35th Biennial of São Paulo, Choreographies of the Impossible, 2023.
She is the author of the acclaimed “Plantation Memories” (Unrast, 2008) a compilation of episodes of everyday racism written in the form of short psychoanalytical stories. Her book has been translated into several languages worldwide.
Her work has been presented in major international events such as: 10. Berlin Biennale, Berlin; Documenta 14, Kassel; 32. Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo. Selected solo and group exhibitions include the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Somerset House, London; Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin; Pinacoteca de São Paulo, São Paulo; Bildmuseet, Umeå; Kunsthalle Baden-Baden; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Norval Foundation, Cape Town; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, among others.
Kilomba’s work can be found in many prominent public collections around the world, including Tate Modern Collection, London; Royal Dutch Collection, Amsterdam; International African American Museum Collection, Charleston; Fitzwilliam Museum Collection, Cambridge, among others.