Tarik Kiswanson

“For me, the studio is not a physical space, but a state of mind.”

Tarik Kiswanson’s artistic practice spans sculpture, drawing, video, sound and writing. The way his art takes form is not confined to a given medium or a literal explanation. Rather, it emerges through contact and interaction with its surroundings: through the specific conditions of physical spaces and the people who move through them, but also through the mental spaces and fields of thought that open up in these encounters. His art is in a constant state of transformation, while remaining rooted in his personal history and experiences of the world.

Motivation

In his artistic practice, Tarik Kiswanson explores how identity and belonging are shaped through movement between places, languages and historical contexts. Working across sculpture, film and text, he engages with bodies and materials in changing and often unstable states. His works challenge notions of belonging and memory as something fixed, instead making the in-between and the temporary starting points for an aesthetic of his own.

In his internationally acclaimed practice, the human being and space, the personal and the collective, come together in explorations of how experiences of migration and loss can take material and spatial form.

For a significant and innovative body of work that, with great artistic integrity, deepens the conversation about our relationship to change, loss and memory, Tarik Kiswanson is awarded a 2026 scholarship from the Sten A Olsson Foundation for Research and Culture.