Meleko Mokgosi
Meleko Mokgosi, born in Francistown, Botswana, is an artist who works within an interdisciplinary framework to create large-scale, project-based installations. His work explores historical painting, cinematic tropes, psychoanalysis and post-colonial theory, and his studio program interrogates narrative cliches, alongside established European notions of representation in order to address questions of nationhood, anti-colonial sentiments and the perception of historicized events.
Most recently, Mokgosi's artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Sweden, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts. His work has also been featured in venues including the Botswana National Gallery, Gaborone; the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City; the Hammer Museum; Los Angeles, California; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, California; and the Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon, France.
Mokgosi's art is included in public collections, such as the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California; the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida; and the Colby Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine.
In spring 2017, Mokgosi presented solo exhibitions at the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts; the Rochester Contemporary Art Center, New York, and the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester.
Mokgosi earned a B.A. degree from Williams College in 2007, and participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program that same year. He later earned an M.F.A. degree from the interdisciplinary studio program at the University of California at Los Angeles in 2011, and was part of the Artist-in-Residence program at the Studio Museum in Harlem 2011-12.