Footnotes

Provenance
A private collection.

Exhibited
Italy, South Africa Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale, What remains is tomorrow, May-November 2015, (the film Inzilo was presented in which this image appears);
Tyburn gallery, Mohau Modisakeng: Bophirima, June-September 2016.

Literature
Gerhard Mulder, Mohau Modisakeng, (Cape Town: WHATIFTHEWORLD, 2017), pp. 76-77. (illustrated).

Born in Soweto in 1986, Modisakeng's childhood was filled with political unrest and transition from the Apartheid. Ignited by his mother's recounts of her visions, communicated to him under the format of descriptive images, Modisakeng became interested in using images to narrate dreams, ideas, feelings, and intangible notions of history. The artist personifies his lived experience while in turn reflecting within a self-actualisation acknowledgment. With an interest in the history of not only South Africa but also the history of black people, Modisakeng examines historical trauma and violence, historically thematic tropes that he believes are suppressed by the media.

Taken from his film, Inzilo (2013), Mohau Modisakeng is captured in the present lot in a state of mourning. Translating from the Zulu term for widowhood, 'Inzilo' creates a link between the process of mourning, a conventionally private practise, and the history of South Africa. The artist expresses grief, both personal and political, mourning the history of his ancestry taken by the slave trade and the Apartheid, a concept thematically consistent within his work. Inzilo I captures the moment that the artist rises from his seat, expelling the fragmented dust and hardened clay that he had peeled from his hands and feet. Traditionally performed by women, Modisakeng challenges concepts of ritual and gender conformity to societal and cultural structures by using his own body to engage with and cross these barriers. In this moment, the artist propagates the process of grief, in turn beginning the process of starting over. Aesthetically, Modisakeng aims to keep his work as minimal as possible, allowing space for only notable signifiers, and engaging a rawness, sculptural quality, and emphasis on his subject matter.

Modisakeng graduated with a Bachelor's degree from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town in 2009 and again with a Master's in 2014. The artist has exhibited in New York, London, Dakar, Basel, and Cape Town. His work is held in public collections with Johannesburg Art Gallery, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, and the Saatchi Gallery, London and in significant private collections such as Zeitz MOCAA. He also represented South Africa at the South African Pavilion at 56th and 57th Venice Biennale in 2015 and 2017. Modisakeng was also commissioned for Performa Biennale in 2017 and Sharjah Biennale in 2019. In 2016, Modisakeng was awarded the Standard Bank Artist of the Year for visual art in 2016.