For two decades, Tarik Kiswanson has engaged with themes of loss, memory, and regeneration through an expansive interdisciplinary practice. His works are shaped by legacies of displacement and transformation, which are essential to both their form and the modes of sensing they produce. While retaining an attachment to the intimate and personal, his practice extends to address universal concerns and broader historical, political and social narratives of rupture and reconstruction. His art engages with the architecture of the spaces in which it is exhibited, transcending conventional modes of representation to create holistic encounters.

Kiswanson’s practice engages with material culture and the mnemonic capacities of objects, interrogating the enduring aftermath of war and displacement across varied historical and geopolitical contexts. His projects examine how artefacts produced during or in the aftermath of trauma can be recontextualized as sites of resilience and collective historical consciousness. By exploring the language of objects, Kiswanson’s archaeology of memory gives voice to the unspeakable. Rather than reconciling the contradictions of our history, he makes them visible, underscoring their reverberations across generations and geographies.

Tarik Kiswanson comes from a Palestinian family that was exiled from Jerusalem, by way of Tripoli and Amman, before finally settling in Halmstad, Sweden, where he was born in 1986.  Kiswanson spent ten years in London where he studied art before relocating to Paris where he has lived and worked since 2010. He received his MFA from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (2014) and BFA from Central Saint Martins-University of the Arts London (2010).

Tarik Kiswanson was awarded the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2023 at Centre Pompidou. His work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions at institutions, most recently at Gothenburg Konstmuseum (2026), Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (2025), Kunsthalle Portikus (2024), Bonniers Konsthall (2023), Salzburger Kunstverein (2023), Museo Tamayo (2023), and Carré d’Art-Musée d’art contemporain (2021). He has participated in group exhibitions and biennials at institutions such as Centre Pompidou, Moderna Museet, Fundação de Serralves, Qattan Foundation, the 15th Baltic Triennial, Abu Dhabi Public Art Biennale, Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Lyon Biennial of Contemporary Art, Performa Biennial 19 and The Ural Biennial.