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Meleko Mokgosi, Woman Sitting, 2021 © Meleko Mokgosi. Photo: Paul Rogers Photography

In Conversation

Meleko Mokgosi
Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi

Saturday, August 14, 2021, 5:30pm
The Current, Stowe, Vermont
www.thecurrentnow.org

Join Meleko Mokgosi and Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, for a conversation about Mokgosi’s exhibition Scripto-visual, on view at the Current in Stowe, Vermont, through November 13, 2021. The pair will discuss the technical aspects of Mokgosi’s practice and the themes in the exhibition, including the artist’s investigations of representation and power. This in person event is free to attend.

Meleko Mokgosi, Woman Sitting, 2021 © Meleko Mokgosi. Photo: Paul Rogers Photography

Left: Meleko Mokgosi. Photo: courtesy Vilcek Foundation. Right: Isaac Julien. Photo: Thierry Bal

In Conversation

Meleko Mokgosi
Isaac Julien

Thursday, December 17, 2020, 1pm est

Gagosian is pleased to partner with the Decolonising Arts Institute of the University of the Arts London (ual) in hosting a dialogue between Meleko Mokgosi and Isaac Julien, moderated by Zoé Whitley, director of Chisenhale Gallery, London. The two artists will discuss narrative and montage strategies in their respective practices as painter and filmmaker. The event will be introduced by Gagosian director Louise Neri and ual Decolonising Arts Institute director susan pui san lok. To join, register at zoom.us.

Left: Meleko Mokgosi. Photo: courtesy Vilcek Foundation. Right: Isaac Julien. Photo: Thierry Bal

Left: Meleko Mokgosi. Photo: courtesy the artist. Right: Michael Armitage. Photo: Theo Christelis © White Cube

In Conversation

Meleko Mokgosi
Michael Armitage

Thursday, December 10, 2020, 1pm est

Gagosian is pleased to partner with the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Art at University College London (ucl) in presenting a dialogue between artists Meleko Mokgosi and Michael Armitage. The two African artists will discuss the politics of contemporary figurative painting and their concurrent exhibitions—Meleko Mokgosi: Democratic Intuition at Gagosian, London, and Michael Armitage: Paradise Edict at Haus der Kunst, Munich. The conversation will be introduced by Gagosian directors Louise Neri and Jona Lueddeckens, and moderated by Tamar Garb, professor of art history at ucl, whose research focuses on gender and sexuality, race and representation, and contemporary art in southern Africa. To join, register at zoom.us.

Left: Meleko Mokgosi. Photo: courtesy the artist. Right: Michael Armitage. Photo: Theo Christelis © White Cube

Meleko Mokgosi: Democratic Intuition (New York: Pacific Publishing, 2020). Photo: Dan Bradica © Pacific

In Conversation

Meleko Mokgosi
Antwaun Sargent

Thursday, November 19, 2020, 1pm EST

To mark the publication of Meleko Mokgosi: Democratic Intuition, Gagosian and Jack Shainman Gallery will host a dialogue between the artist and critic Antwaun Sargent. Published by Pacific with Jack Shainman Gallery, the book documents Mokgosi’s epic painting project Democratic Intuition (2013–20), which explores the internal contradictions of the theory that the function of democracy is dependent upon accessible education. Compelling genre scenes, often involving prominent figures from African public life, jump-cut between the confines of manual work, the freedoms of intellectual enterprise, and their ties to gender and race. In a conversation introduced by Gagosian director Louise Neri and moderated by Jack Shainman Gallery director Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels, Mokgosi and Sargent will discuss the artist’s interdisciplinary investigation of postcolonial nationhood and the democratic process. To join, register at zoom.us.

Meleko Mokgosi: Democratic Intuition (New York: Pacific Publishing, 2020). Photo: Dan Bradica © Pacific

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Breonna Taylor, 2020 © Nathaniel Mary Quinn

Support

Show Me the Signs

November 10–30, 2020

Show Me the Signs is an online benefit auction hosted by Artfizz to support the families of Black women killed by the police. Over a hundred artists have created pieces in the form of protest signs for the auction, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to the African American Policy Forum’s #SayHerName Mothers Network. Work by Louise Bonnet, Piero Golia, Meleko Mokgosi, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, and Nancy Rubins is included. To register to bid, visit artfizz.com.

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Breonna Taylor, 2020 © Nathaniel Mary Quinn

Meleko Mokgosi’s digital art installation for the façade of Flannels, London, 2020. Artwork © Meleko Mokgosi. Photo: courtesy W1 Curates

Public Installation

W1 Curates
Meleko Mokgosi

October 1–18, 2020
Flannels, London
www.w1curates.com

Meleko Mokgosi has created a new digital work viewable around the clock on a three-story building on Oxford Street in London, presented by W1 Curates. The project comprises an algorithmic sequence of image fragments and text panels from Mokgosi’s narrative paintings, digitally adapted to the full scale on a ten-minute loop across the building’s façade. W1 Curates aims to bring art to the people by using state-of-the-art technology to transform the exterior of the Flannels London flagship store into a digital exhibition space.

Meleko Mokgosi’s digital art installation for the façade of Flannels, London, 2020. Artwork © Meleko Mokgosi. Photo: courtesy W1 Curates

Announcements

Meleko Mokgosi

Honor

Meleko Mokgosi
2020 Soros Arts Fellowship

Meleko Mokgosi has been selected to receive the 2020 Soros Arts Fellowship, alongside nine other cultural practitioners working at the intersection of migration, public space, and the arts. He will receive a stipend to realize an ambitious project titled Pan-African Pulp over the next eighteen months. Through publications, murals, posters, and a digital archive, Mokgosi will explore histories of Pan-Africanism in southern African pulp photo-novels of the 1960s and 1970s, with the aim of reviving ideas of Pan-Africanism and Black consciousness to build transcontinental alliances between groups fighting systems of oppression today.

Meleko Mokgosi

Museum Exhibitions

Meleko Mokgosi, The Social Revolution of Our Time Cannot Take Its Poetry from the Past but Only from the Poetry of the Future, VIII, 2019 © Meleko Mokgosi. Photo: Aaron Siskind Foundation

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Meleko Mokgosi
Scripto-visual

June 17–November 13, 2021
The Current, Stowe, Vermont
www.thecurrentnow.org

Titled after a neologism describing the combination of image and textual work, Meleko Mokgosi’s exhibition Scripto-visual continues the artist’s investigations into the links between these two elements in relation to the politics of representation. Small and large works are paired with writing by African American or African authors, including poems and theoretical texts addressing a variety of topics ranging from history to the lived experiences of particular sections of the population both in the United States and in southern Africa.

Meleko Mokgosi, The Social Revolution of Our Time Cannot Take Its Poetry from the Past but Only from the Poetry of the Future, VIII, 2019 © Meleko Mokgosi. Photo: Aaron Siskind Foundation

Ellen Gallagher, Abu Simbel, 2005 © Ellen Gallagher

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Ubuntu
The Harry David Art Collection

September 19, 2020–March 18, 2021
National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens
www.emst.gr

The South African term ubuntu refers to notions of community and a spirit of sharing. As the inaugural exhibition of works from the Harry David Art Collection—which showcases leading artists active in Africa and the diaspora as well as African American artists—Ubuntu introduces five distinct curatorial viewpoints unfolding across five specially designed rooms. Each presents a personal selection of works from the collection chosen by one of five different artists and curators. In this way, the collection functions as a resource that is open to interpretation, with each space enabling artworks to be encountered as a series of unique conversations. Work by Ellen Gallagher, Theaster Gates, Romauld Hazoumè, and Meleko Mokgosi is included.

Ellen Gallagher, Abu Simbel, 2005 © Ellen Gallagher

See all Museum Exhibitions for Meleko Mokgosi