ZANJ, 12´ (2019)
film
Mohau Modisakeng’s movie ZANJ (2019) is a continuation from the performance Land of Zanj, recently commissioned by the Sharjah Biennial. Here, Modisakeng created a choreographed procession as a symbol for the movement of bodies and trade between the Gulf area and the east African coast. This strategy is mimicked in the artist’s latest photographic series, which shows figures cloaked in black moving across a rocky terrain. Who are and were these veiled subjects? Could they have been Africans captured to be pearl-divers, led between home and circumstance? Or could they be deporting migrants, a contemporary relic of the aforementioned history? Modisakeng urges the audience to engage with these figures as poignant markers of this legacy of movement, using invocations of violence as a tool to evoke empathy in the viewer.
Mohau Modisakeng (SA, 1986) is based in Johannesburg and Cape Town, we he received his education at the Michaelis School of Fine Art. He won the SASLO New Signatures Award and the Standard Bank Young Artists Award and represented his country at the Venice Biennale in 2015 and 2017. He has also shown at Volta, New York; Saatchi Gallery, London; Dak’Art Biennale; Sharjah Biennial; PERFORMA17, New York and many more significant international institutions. He recently was commissioned to create a memorial for Nelson Mandela, which will be revealed in Amsterdam Zuidoost’s Nelson Mandelapark in 2020.
The short film ZANJ by Mohau Modisakeng is shown at a solo-exhibition exhibition at Ron Mandos, Amsterdam, NL
Music is composed and recorded by Lil Lacy
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