Meleko Mokgosi's Democratic Intuition: Lerato at Jack Shainman Gallery Explores Democracy Through Love and Allegory
From September 8 to October 22, 2016, the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City showcased Meleko Mokgosi's exhibition titled Democratic Intuition: Lerato, which was presented alongside Comrades II at the Chelsea location. Originating from Botswana, Mokgosi's work, part of a series that began in 2014, delves into the concept of democracy beyond its formal structures, utilizing the Setswana term 'lerato' (love) to investigate community connections. His expansive canvases depict matriarchs, bulls, and untranslated Setswana texts, prompting viewers to link Southern African narratives with democratic themes. Influenced by his studies at UCLA and the Whitney Museum, Mokgosi's exhibition also features a reinterpretation of Bouguereau's 1883 piece The Motherland and a depiction of Jacob wrestling the angel, highlighting the complexities stemming from colonial violence.
Key facts
- Exhibition Democratic Intuition: Lerato ran September 8 - October 22, 2016 at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City
- Meleko Mokgosi is a Botswana-born, NYC-based painter who began the Democratic Intuition series in 2014
- The series explores how democracy is sustained beyond formal political mechanisms through the concept of 'lerato' (love)
- Mokgosi studied at the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program and UCLA's Interdisciplinary Studio Program
- Paintings feature untranslated Setswana texts, matriarchs, bulls, household items, and class portraits
- Work engages with Paul de Man's theories of reading and allegory as impossibility of definitive interpretation
- Mokgosi transforms William-Adolphe Bouguereau's 1883 painting The Motherland, connecting abstraction to colonial history
- The exhibition suggests Africa's fragmentation during colonialism influenced modernist abstraction in Western art
Entities
Artists
- Meleko Mokgosi
- William-Adolphe Bouguereau
- Picasso
- Gustave Doré
- Mark Tansey
- Clement Greenberg
- Paul de Man
- Frantz Fanon
- Gayatri Spivak
- Françoise Vergès
- Mahmood Mamdani
- Simon Gikandi
- Denise Murrell
Institutions
- Jack Shainman Gallery
- Institute of Contemporary Art Boston
- Stevenson Art Gallery
- Whitney Museum
- UCLA
- University of Minnesota Press
- Yale University Press
- Harvard University Press
- Beacon
- Routledge
- Princeton University Press
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
- ARTMargins Online
Locations
- New York City
- United States
- Botswana
- São Paulo
- Cape Town
- South Africa
- Boston
- Minneapolis
- New Haven
- Cambridge
- Princeton
- Rwanda
- Africa
- Europe
- North Africa
- Middle East
- Chelsea
- 20th St