Grada Kilomba is a Berlin-based Portuguese artist whose work draws on memory, trauma and post-colonialism. Using performance, staged reading, video, sculptural and sound installations the artist interrogates concepts of violence and repetition.

Kilomba is best known for her unique practice of storytelling, in which she creates subversive and poetic imagery by giving body, voice, form and movement to her own writings: “What stories are told? How are they told? And told by whom?” are constant questions in Kilomba’s body of work.

Her work has been presented in major international events such as: Bienalsur, Buenos Aires (2021); BoCa-Biennale of Contemporary Art, Lisbon (2021); La Biennale de Lubumbashi VI (2019); 10. Berlin Biennale (2018); Documenta 14, Kassel (2017); 32. Bienal de São Paulo (2016). Selected solo and group exhibitions include Museum Reina Sofia, Madrid (2024); Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (2024); Kunsthaus Graz (2024); Museum Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2024); Neon Art Foundation, Athens (2024); Inhotim, Belo Horizonte (2024); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2023); Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (2023); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2022); Museum of Contemporary Art Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2022); Kiasma, Helsinky (2022); Sommerset House, London (2022); Norval Foundation, Cape Town (2022); Amant Art Foundation, New York (2021); ARos-Aarhus Art Museum, Aarhus (2021); MUAC-Museum Universitario de Arte Contemporanea, Mexico City (2021); Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo (2020); Kunsthall Charlottenborg , Copenhagen (2020); Pinacoteca de São Paulo (2019); PAC-Pavillion Arte Contemporanea, Milan (2019); Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (2019); The Power Plant, Toronto (2018); MAAT-Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon (2017); among others. She was the co-curator of the 35th Biennial of São Paulo, Choreographies of the Impossible, 2023.

Kilomba’s work can be found in many prominent public and private collections around the world, including Tate Modern Collection, London; Royal Dutch Collection, Amsterdam; Fitzwilliam Museum Collection, Cambridge; Rennie Collection, Toronto; Hammer Museum Collection, Los Angeles; International African American Museum Collection, Charleston; Hessel Museum of Art, New York; Gulbenkian Modern Collection, Lisbon; MAAT-Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon, among others.

In 2024, Kilomba is the recipient of the honourable Angela Davis Professorship 2024, at the Goethe Universität, in Frankfurt - “Grada Kilomba: The Art of Performing Knowledge”. She holds a distinguished Doctorate in Philosophy from the Freie Universität Berlin, and in 2023 the artist was awarded with a Doctorate Honoris Causa by University of ISPA, Lisbon, in honour of her artistic and intellectual oeuvre. 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 reside at the prominent Maxim Gorki Theatre, in Berlin (2015-2017), where she developed the acclaimed project ‘Kosmos²’, an artistic and political intervention with refugee artists.

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, including French, Italian, Spanish, English and Portuguese.

The artist is represented by the Goodman Gallery in London, Cape Town and Johannesburg and by the Pace Gallery in New York.