Grada Kilomba is a interdisciplinary artist and writer, born in Lisbon and living in Berlin.
Her work draws on memory, trauma, race, gender, and the decolonisation of knowledge: ‘who can speak?’ ‘what can we speak about?’ and ‘What happens when we speak?’ are three constant questions in Kilomba’s body of work. In her work, she intentionally creates a hybrid space between the academic and the artistic languages, and uses storytelling as a central element for her decolonial practices.
She is best known for her subversive and her unconventional use of artistic practices, in which she gives body, voice and image to her own text – what she describes as Performing Knowledge – using a variety of formats such as Publication, Performance, Staged Reading, Installation, Film, Text Collage, Sound and Video Installation.
She is the author of Plantation Memories (2008) a compilation of episodes of everyday racism written in the form of short psychoanalytical stories; and the co-editor of Mythen, Masken und Subjekte (2005), an anthology on Critical Whiteness Studies.
Her artworks have been presented internationally, including at: 10. Berlin Biennale; Documenta 14, Kassel; 32. Bienal de São Paulo; Rauma Biennal Balticum; Art Basel; Frieze London, Cape Town Art Fair; 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Marrakech; The Power Plant, Toronto; MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon; Galeria Avenida da Índia, Lisbon; WdW Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Secession Museum, Vienna; Bozar Museum, Brussels; SAVYY Contemporary, Berlin; Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin, among others.