Kelvin Haizel was an artist-in-residence in 2021 and 2022 as part of the MARKK in Motion project. In the exhibition “Archive of Experiences,” he explored, through his art, a historical photo album from 1868 from the MARKK archives. The album features photographs from Singapore and comes from the estate of a Hamburg merchant family. Kelvin Haizel repeatedly references the album in his work. Under the theme “Exchange Processes” of the 8th Hamburg Triennial of Photography (2022), Haizel used the exhibition “Entanglements” to highlight colonial power structures.
Kelvin Haizel’s artistic practice began with an ontological question—what can an image, as a physical object, be, and what can it depict? Haizel therefore views images as material objects and a physical part of reality. Building on this premise, the artist has worked with and experimented with various technical methods for creating images within the expanded field of photography. From snapshots to tableaux, from documentary film to archival research—his approach to the image is consistent with his aim to challenge the interpretive authority of visual images. His works have been shown in exhibitions in Ghana and internationally, including in “OderlyDisorderly” (2017), “Rencontres de Bamako,” at the “Biennale Africaine de la Photographie” (2017), at the “Stellenbosch Triennial” (2020), at the “ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum” (2021), and at the “Museum of Contemporary Photography,” Chicago (2022). Haizel also participated in Documenta Fifteen as part of the collective blaxTARLINES KUMASI. At the invitation of the Black Arts Consortium in Chicago, he was a resident artist at the “Hyde Park Art Centre” and a research fellow at Northwestern University in 2022.
