Meleko Mokgosi, who was born in Botswana, employs traditions of Western European painting to deliver sharp political critiques relating to the postcolonial condition. By combining a high degree of painterly skill with a poetic, open-ended semiotic approach and an affinity for archival research, the artist shines light on some of the complex socioeconomic dynamics that animate contemporary southern Africa.

Mokgosi typically employs hyper-realistic figurative imagery on an epic scale, incorporating mysterious, unidentified personages loosely linked to one another in implied storylines, sometimes spanning multiple timeframes within the same composition. His work references murals and cinema as well as the conventional European artistic genre known as history painting. Whereas traditional history paintings feature lofty subjects—military battles or climactic scenes drawn from ancient legends—Mokgosi elevates everyday, anonymous persons and common objects, setting them against mundane domestic contexts while inserting references that establish an array of subtle yet powerful suggestive effects. “This exhibition engages PAMM’s long-abiding interest in the Afro-Atlantic world that interweaves Europe, Africa, the U.S., Latin America and the Caribbean,” said René Morales, PAMM’s Interim Director of Curatorial Affairs. “It draws from Miami’s deep identification as the crossroads of the Americas while signaling the museum’s dedication to addressing issues of racial, ethnic, and national identity with an eye toward diversity and transnational and cross-cultural interconnection.”

Mokgosi’s exhibition at PAMM centers around the 1966 film Unsere Afrikareise (Our Trip to Africa) by the seminal filmmaker Peter Kubelka, who is widely recognized as one of the progenitors of the Structural film movement. The film follows a wealthy Austrian family on their safari trip through Africa, revealing the differences in social and economic status between the two cultures. As the Europeans engage in various leisure activities (swimming, sunbathing, teasing their native attendants, and, of course, hunting), the action is intercut with fleeting glimpses of African passersby engaged in their daily labor (carrying water, pounding a mortar with a pestle).

Kubelka punctuates these sequences with the repetitive, gruesome spectacle of the Austrians killing and skinning an elephant, a zebra, a lion, a giraffe, and other wild animals. The disconcerting dimensions of Unsere Africareise have often been cited, together with Kubelka’s stated disgust with his bourgeois patrons, to support the argument that he meant the work to serve as a critique of European colonialism and tourism in Africa. Mokgosi takes a more critical perspective, however, citing Kubelka’s insistence that his true intention was to “try and tear the emotions loose from the people, so that they would gain distance to their emotions, their feelings.” Taking Kubelka at his word, Mokgosi infuses the film with a new emotional force, reversing the desensitized tone that often accompanies modernist aesthetic treatments of non-Western subjects. As he has often done before, Mokgosi drives this critique through the heart of the Western art historical canon.

Meleko Mokgosi completed the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and received a BA from Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, in 2007. He received an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in 2011. Solo exhibitions of his work have been presented at the Fowler Museum at UCLA; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown; Jack Shainman Gallery, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles. His work has been included in group exhibitions at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; New Wight Gallery, UCLA; National Library of Cameroon, Yaounde; Whitney Museum of American Art; National Gallery, Gaborone, Botswana; and the Augusta Savage Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His work is included in the collections of The Studio Museum in Harlem; Hammer Museum; Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida; Colby Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine; and Pérez Art Museum Miami, among other institutions.

Meleko Mokgosi: Your Trip to Africa is organized by PAMM Interim Director of Curatorial Affairs René Morales.

Meleko Mokgosi: Your Trip To Africa

Feb. 28, 2020 – May 30, 2021

Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)

The post Meleko Mokgosi appeared first on Artskop.

An abstract woman painted in black sits on top of a red goat. She wears a delicate lace top while on her head are stitched together leather straps that hang down like hair. The work, entitled The Journey (2020) by DRC-born Cape Town-based artist Patrick Bongoy, becomes more interesting when we see that she is depicted with the same hooves as the goat. It was displayed on the wall of Ebony/Curated, a gallery with branches in Franschhoek and Cape Town, during the eighth edition of the Investec Cape Town Art Fair. The work, made with hessian, acrylic and rubber inner tubes, portrays the artist’s signature whimsical world that explores themes of migration, alienation and loss of one’s homeland. Also a fashion designer, Bongoy’s work speaks directly to today’s global state of environmental crisis. “My work speaks in response to the global reality of literal and figurative environmental pollution,” he says. Hard to miss after his startling sculpture of a figure at this year’s inaugural Stellenbosch Triennale of a man made in disused rubber hunched over as if trying to free himself from the confines of a pieces of fabric. The piece, which sold in the range of $6,000 and $10,000, was indicative of a strong presence of socio-political work at the fair, challenging present and past ideas of identity and historical narratives as the African continent jets into a new future.

The eighth edition of Investec Cape Town Art Fair returned to its home at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, with a new mission to endow the fair with a stronger African focus. “This is an international art fair where we bring in galleries from Europe and the US but we tried this year to focus more on galleries from the African continent,” said fair director Laura Vicenti. 

Out of the fair’s 107 exhibitors this year, 49 galleries were from the African continent and 58 were international, underlining a greater emphasis on the local. In previous years European blue-chip galleries such as Perrotin and Galerie Templon participated. Such names were replaced this year with new galleries from North Africa and the Middle East, including Lawrie Shabibi from Dubai, Galerie Veronique Rieffel from Ivory Coast and Tunisian Yosr Ben Ammar Gallery and AGORGI, among others. In addition, leading museums and institutions from around the world were present, including A4 Arts Foundation, ANO Institute of Contemporary Arts, FOLIO by Alserkal Arts Foundation, Fondazione Merz, Friends der Pinakothek der Moderne, Iziko South African National Gallery, the Centre Pompidou, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, The Norval Foundation, Palais de Lomé, Skissernas Museum – Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art, Tate Modern African Acquisitions Committee, WEDGE Curatorial Projects, Yerevan Biennial Art Foundation and Zeitz MOCAA.

Yet the challenging socio-economic landscape did provide cause for concern for many participants as well as the fair’s management. How does one host a contemporary art fair in a country where the local currency continues to plunge? 

“The economic landscape of South Africa is challenging,” said Vicenti. “Local collectors are very supportive but it is true that they are facing an economic crisis in South Africa so I tried to balance the situation by having international collectors from all over the world. The number of international collectors increased this year. In comparison to last year there is no comparison. But I am trying hard to have more collectors from Africa.” 

Local dealers were divided, however, on whether the buying power was coming from South Africa or abroad. “Of course we are happy when people from elsewhere come to South Africa to buy art—but the most exciting thing about this year’s Cape Town Art Fair was that the vast majority of our sales were to South Africans,” said Joost Bosland, a director at Stevenson. “It is amazing to see local support for our artists grow year on year.”

South African powerhouse galleries Stevenson, Blank Projects, SMAC Gallery and Goodman Gallery all reported swift sales on the first day of the fair. At the booth of Stevenson was an all-star group showing of emerging and established artists from the continent, including Meleko Mokgosi, Robin Rhode, Zanele Muholi, Neo Matloga and Paulo Nazareth and Simphiwe Ndzube. The gallery reported swift sales in the range of $2,000 and $75,000 and the works, like that of Bongoy’s, once again married the otherworldly and magical realm of dreams with the references to the often harsh reality of the present. 

Several of the fair’s biggest sales took place at Goodman Gallery’s booth, which confirmed approximately 25 sales in total on the opening day ranging from $2,000 to $500,000. The booth showed a line-up of some of their biggest names, including Ghada Amer, Yinka Shonibare…“We had a great diversity in terms of the spend and also the collectors that acquired the works,” said the gallery’s Anthony Dawson. “This is thanks hugely to Fiera Milano, the organizers of the fair who have cultivated a great program and collector base that is not only diversifying audiences to contemporary African art but bringing new brand new collectors into the country.”

“Cape Town is a stronghold for a lot of German citizens who have holiday homes here and they often come to the fair,” continued Dawson. “In addition, through the Italian organizers many Italian collectors were also in attendance but there seems to be strong focus of people from Western Europe coming more and more to Cape Town. We also had collectors from Angola and Nigeria as well. Overall, I’d say the majority of collectors were European.”

Taking place concurrently were two auctions for contemporary and modern art in Cape Town: The Aspire x Piasa Auction, which took place on 14 February and Strauss & Co’s Contemporary Art sale, which took place the day after. The former told of the first time a South African auction house had teamed up with a European equivalent to host a sale of African art on the continent. “Both auction houses made a big effort to bring French collectors to Cape Town which also added to a new audience in the city at the fair,” added Dawson. “With Piasa’s francophone influence we also so collectors arrive from West Africa that the South African audience has never been exposed to.”

The fair was also the place to forge long-term business relationships. First-time participant Galerie Veronique Rieffel from Cote d’Ivoire who showed a series of haunting works by Swiss-French photographer Manuel Braun of an Ivorian dancer in Egypt said she sold works largely to European collectors passing through Cape Town in the range of €3,500 and €6,000. “I forged excellent relationship with local collectors which deserve to be deepened,” said Rieffel. “I have formed a very beautiful partnership with a gallery in Cape Town, South gallery, and we have agreed to continue to show Braun’s work with them in situ.”

The recent edition of Investec Cape Town Art Fair testifies that a buoyant market for African contemporary art in South Africa can be achieved even during the most economically challenging of times—but through a concerted effort of local and international collectors, galleries and artists. 

The post Against the Odds, Investec Cape Town Art Fair Proves Solid Ground for African Art Market appeared first on Artskop.