Meleko Mokgosi (born 1981) is an artist and associate professor of painting and drawing at the School of Art at Yale University.
[7][2][6][5] Mokgosi studied for four years with American conceptual artist Mary Kelly, who guided him in developing a project-based practice, which he described as "focused not on producing objects but articulating a set of questions".
[12] In 2019, his solo show Meleko Mokgosi: Your Trip to Africa at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida, showcased a new large-scale commission created for PAMM's double-high project gallery.
Through Mokgosi's detailed figurative and often hyperrealist paintings, the show extended the artist's investigations on the postcolonial condition, national identity, and life in southern Africa.
This involves reproducing museum labels on canvas with annotations to highlight the inherent cultural bias and colonial power dynamics in these supposedly neutral educational materials.
These works combine a range of imagery, tropes and symbols, to bring a critical eye to aspects of national identity, colonial history and post-colonial legacies within Southern Africa.