Kjell Caminha
About Kjell Caminha
Kjell Caminha is an artist from Teresina, Brazil, based in Gothenburg since 2009. Kjell works with quotidian settings and political issues, charging them with new implications and demands. These are constantly enrolled with his research on identity. He is interested in juxtaposing facts, ideas and different collaborators to construct situations where fictional stories informs thoughts touching how one's identity might be changed, mixed, crashed with others, clarified or even erased at times.
Kjell Caminha’s research process often envelops a context, a specific issue or situation that relates to its own connection with identity. Through the use of text, photography, audio, sculpture, installation, performance and increasing interest in curatorial practices, Kjell constructs situations where a possibly active dialogue and participation with the viewer is strongly expected.
Caminha’s practice relates to methodologies within decoloniality of being and knowledge:
I’m concerned on how we mistakenly reproduce and reinstall practices of colonialism using modernity, development and freedom as ways of re-conquering resources, cultures and individuals. I’m interested in settings that might re-problematize the experience of those practices, leading to an incitement for retelling and reinterpreting.
Kjell Caminha holds a Master of Fine Arts from Valand Academy and has recently participated in the project Counterparts in Gothenburg curated and produced by Anna van der Vliet from ICIA (Institute for Contemporary Ideas and Art), for whom he has also worked as a curatorial assistant.
With the support of Valand Academy, Kjell Caminha has been focusing his artistic research on welcoming and fostering forums for discussion on decolonial practices, diversity and migration knowledge and politics. Lately he is developing a research seminar for January 2016 on afrophobia - regarding approaches towards decolonial curatorial practices, as a continuation and expansion on the last seminar entitled Practices and Notions of the Migrant Image, with Daniel Baker (UK), Geir Tore Holm (Sámi/NO) and Paula Urbano (SE) and Louise Wolthers (DK).