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Artworks
Meleko Mokgosi
Objects of Desire 6, 2018Oil and canvas and paper mounted on boardLeft Painting Dimensions:
64 x 40 1/4 inches
(162.6 x 102.2 cm)
Right Painting Dimensions:
64 x 44 inches
(162.6 x 111.8 cm)
Individual Wall Text Panel Dimensions:
12 x 9 inches
(30.5 x 22.9 cm)Further images
Objects of Desire 6, 2018 comes from the penultimate chapter in Democratic Intuitions. Mokgosi's research for this body of work took him to the Museum of Modern Art's archives, specifically...Objects of Desire 6, 2018 comes from the penultimate chapter in Democratic Intuitions. Mokgosi's research for this body of work took him to the Museum of Modern Art's archives, specifically the exhibitions "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern (1984) and Objects of Desire: The Modern Still Life (1997). The text within the work is pulled from the Primitivism show — which Mokgosi has altered with handwritten edits — that has become infamous for the way in which curator William Rubin discussed the African works on view only as they were perceived and collected by the early Modernists — not as objects with their own histories. Mokgosi approaches this conflict by examining the contemporary African object in his own paintings with the aim of challenging the legacy of African art in the West. Emblematic of much of Mokgosi's work, Objects of Desire 6 draws a complex relationship between the painted panels and text with the artist's notes sandwiched in between.
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