Close Look: 9 Highlights from the Armory Show
by Andrew M. Goldstein
The most electrifying piece at the Armory Show may be this one, a ten-panel work by the 31-year-old Botswana-born artist Meleko Mokgosi, who is currently teaching at New York University.
ARTSPACE
February 15, 2013
The Joan Mitchell Foundation announce Meleko Mokgosi to be one of twenty-five recipients of the 2012 Painters & Sculptors Grant Program.
The Painters & Sculptors Grant Program was established in 1993 to assist individual artists. The grants are given to acknowledge painters and sculptors creating work of exceptional quality
The Joan Mitchell Foundation
The 50 Most Iconic Artworks of the Past Five Years
41. Pax Kaffraria: Sikhuselo Sembumbulu by Meleko Mokgosi, 2012
For an article in Art in America magazine, Meleko Mokgosi spoke to writer Brian Boucher on the origins of this work's title: "Pax Kaffraria is a term I made up...'Khaffraria' comes from a settlement established by the British in the early 19th century for mostly Xhosa people," he explains. "'Kaffrar' is the equivalent of 'n***er' in Afrikaans. So the project deals with issues of nationalism, anticolonial sentiment, and resistance, not only to the physical violence but the financialization of global capital." The work has become a milestone piece in studies of African politics and globalization, and Mokgosi explains it best.
Complex
January 8, 2013
24 Artists to Watch: Meleko Mokgosi
December 2012
Mokgosi's large-scale, project-based installations, such as Pax Afrikaner, 2008-11, and Pax Kaffraria, 2010-12, take the form of history paintings on panel. They serve, in the artist's words, as "a conceptual, theoretical, and personal working-through of a particular dilemna: the physical and epistemological violence toward black foreigners in southern Africa."
Modern Painters
The Hammer Museum has announced that Meleko Mokgosi is the recipient of the inaugural Mohn Award. Funded through the generosity of Los Angeles philanthropists and art collectors Jarl and Pamela Mohn, the $100,000 award will be granted over two years to Mokgosi and will be accompanied by the publication of a monograph about his work. While a jury of professional curators selected five finalists from among the 60 artists in the exhibition Made in L.A. 2012, the Mohn Award recipient was chosen by visitors to the exhibition through online and on-site voting.
Mohn Award
August 16, 2012
