Through large-scale figurative paintings depicting quotidian life to delicate portraits rendered in etching, Meleko Mokgosi’s work in "Imaging Imaginations" reflexively addresses the role of images in mediating our sense of self and our relation to others.

For more than a decade, Meleko Mokgosi has created imposing multi-panel paintings in which hyper-realistic depictions of Black figures are situated within narrative scenes that prompt viewers to question the ethics of democracy, structures of power, and forms of knowledge. Mokgosi’s attention to Black figures in domestic interiors, abstracted outdoor spaces, and imagined locations is always with an intent to explore a historical or theoretical concept. These concepts are most visibly signaled by his references to vernacular materials such as anti-apartheid posters, photos of political figures, and decorative objects that are specific to his generation’s coming of age in southern Africa.

For "Imaging Imaginations," Mokgosi’s first solo exhibition in Canada, the artist debuts new works from his latest series, Spaces of Subjection, 2022. Within this growing body of work, Mokgosi examines the complexities of subjecthood and the politics of identity and identification. Drawing from French philosopher Michel Foucault’s writing in essays such as “The Subject and Power,” 1982, Mokgosi’s project considers questions of self-fashioning and self-determination within different physical spaces, cultural and national locations, and stages of maturation. The artworks created to debut at the Art Gallery of York University query the role of images as societal forces that inform our sense of self and relation to others, or, in other words, subjecthood.

According to psychoanalysis, images arise in the mind from unconscious fantasies and ideas that impact our responses to real-world situations. Mokgosi is interested in French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s mirror stage theory of human development that outlines the moment in infancy when we first recognize a coherent image of ourselves, through seeing our image in a mirror or identifying ourselves through the presence of another person. For Lacan, it is in the moment of recognizing our image that people are forever split between an internal, desirable, image of themselves that they strive toward throughout their life and the external sense of how they exist in the world. In essence, this stage of development illuminates the centrality of images to the process of constructing subjecthood, despite images being unreliable and prone to distortion.

Meleko Mokgosi (1981) is a Botswanan-born US-based artist and educator. He is Associate Professor at the Yale University’s School of Art and co-founder of The Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program in New York City. He received his MFA from the Interdisciplinary Studio Program at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2011 and received a BA from Williams College in 2007. Mokgosi has participated in numerous residencies such as the Rauschenberg Residency at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Captiva, FL (2015); Artist in Residence Program at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY (2012); and the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program, New York (2007). He has exhibited widely in both group and solo exhibitions, his most recent solo exhibitions including Currents 122: Meleko Mokgosi, Saint Louis Art Museum, MO (2022–2023); Pan-African Pulp, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI (2019–2022); Scripto-visual, The Current, Stowe, VT (2021); and Your Trip to Africa, Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL (2020–2021).

The Jack Weinbaum Family Foundation (JWFF) is the presenting sponsor for "Meleko Mokgosi: Imaging Imaginations."

To read more about the exhibition and its parallel programs visit: https://agyu.art/project/mokgosi/