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Standard Bank Young Artist Winner, 2016: Mohau Modisakeng – LEFA LA NTATE

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Mohau Modisakeng
Mohau Modisakeng

Mohau Modisakeng is the recipient of the Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Arts 2016 award. His photography, films and installation grapple with the conflicting politics of leadership and nationhood, whilst also attempting to unpack the legacy of inequality, capital, labour and extraction of mineral wealth in contemporary South Africa.

Informed by his experience as a young boy in Soweto at the cross roads of a violent political transition, Modisakeng uses memory as a portal between past and present to explore themes of history, body and place within the post –apartheid context.

The LEFA LA NTATE exhibition opening will be held on Wednesday, 27 July 2016 at 17h30 at the NMM Art Museum. The exhibition will be opened by Michael Barry, Head of the Department of Arts, Culture and Heritage at NMMU.

The exhibition closes on 2 September 2016.

Opening times: Weekdays from 09h00 to 17h00 (closed Tuesday mornings, weekends and public holidays). Entrance is free.

In Modisakeng’s work the personal is political. Informed by his experience as a young boy in Soweto at the cross roads of a violent political transition, Modisakeng uses memory as a portal between past and present to explore themes of history, body and place within the post –apartheid context. His photography, films, performance and installation grapple with the conflicting politics of leadership and nationhood, whilst also attempting to unpack the legacy of inequality, capital, labour and extraction of mineral wealth in contemporary South Africa.

Premiering at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown June 2016 LEFA LA NTATE represents a poignant moment of grieving, catharsis and critical response to the historical legacy of exploitation and current lived experience of many black South Africans. Through his work Modisakeng critically engages with the complex mechanisms of violence, power and subjugation as propagated and to some extent internalized through the course of the successive colonial, apartheid and post apartheid regimes.

Hauntingly evoked through Modisakeng’s signature crystalline imagery, impressions of memory and experience are exhaled like a breath captured in film and photography.

Modisakeng uses a personal lexicon of ritual and symbolism in which his physical form becomes both a vessel and a signifier. His use of his own body is a significant shift away from the problematic depiction of the other and is a gesture of self-actualization and acknowledgment of subjective experience.

After exhibiting in Port Elizabeth the works will travel to Pietermaritzburg, Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg.

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Alan Straton

Chief Cook, Bottle Washer and Broom Mechanic at MyPE
Passionate about Port Elizabeth and definitely NOT packing for Perth. Alan's ethos is epitomised in the words of Nelson Mandela; "I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society. If need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." See more articles by Alan.