Mountains of My Youth:
A Novel
Installation view


Mountains of My Youth
A Novel
Detail of installation




Temporal Distance (with
criminal intent) You find us
in the best places...

Mixed-media installation
on 'Graft' at the second
Johannesburg Biennale







Collage and mixed-media works







Installation works





Faxed sketches of ideas
for drawings




Moshekwa Langa
True Confessions: My
Life as a Disco Queen

Video




Moshekwa Langa
Sperm Stain
Video




Portrait of the artist



artbio

Moshekwa Langa
(February, 1999)

Modus operandi:

Still in his early twenties, the visually articulate Moshekwa Langa is one of South Africa's most in-demand international artists. His installations, videos and collages are fresh and surprising, often provocative, yet exhibit a depth and sureness of touch astonishing in one so young. In her proposal for the 1998 São Paulo Biennale, curator Lorna Ferguson had this to say: "Langa is engaged in projects which seek to constantly dislocate the assumed centres of power from within. Through the use of his own mapping devices of erasure, annotation and recordings, he inscribes the cartography of his own identity on to that which previously sought to control through definition. Yet he resists the idea that one can possess one's own identity."

Materials for his drawings and installations are whatever comes to hand - bubble wrap, cigarette butts, toys, spools of cotton, street maps, advertisements - anything can be transformed into a marker in a world created by Langa. Titles are often literary, riddle like, alluding both to a personal history and universal experience. He is the subject of his own videos, producing work that is at the same time both funny and primal, like his True Confessions: My Life as a Disco Queen. Refusing to be classified as a black artist from Africa, Langa neatly sidesteps all attempts to package him as the latest art world commodity, forcing his viewing audience to set aside all preconceptions, and engage with what Langa chooses to set before it.

Artist's statement:

Before going to São Paulo, Langa wrote: "My intention in São Paulo is to invent an accomplice (working name: John Ruskin). Because Moshekwa has to answer stupid questions most of the time - 'Where is Africa in your work?' - we will both be able to answer and I think having this personage might go a long way to deflecting confining thinking. My/our work will be seen in an altered state and not within the limits of simply 'African art'. I am very keen to make this kind of confusion - whose work is which? which work is more authentically 'African'? In other words I want to show that there are multiple forms of influence and that I and other African artists meander and incorporate different forms." And some years earlier: "My work is not about anything. My work has to do with things."

Currently:

On February 23, 5 000 square feet in the Centre d'Art Contemporain in Geneva will be given over to Langa's first museum solo show, curated by Paolo Colombo, with work that includes photographs, videos, large-scale drawings and paintings. The show will run until May 23, and travel plans are still to be announced.

Also:

Langa is currently exhibiting drawings in acryclic and nail polish in Bonn (see News).

Before that:

Langa has just completed a two-year stint at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, his first experience in a tertiary art institution. During that time, he exhibited in four international biennales and any number of shows. Earlier last year, he was one of the six finalists for the 1998 Vita Art Prize (South Africa).

Next up:

In March 1999, Langa will be part of a show called 'The New Worlds', involving artists from South Africa, Canada and Australia, at Canada House in London.

CV:

Born in Bakenberg, South Africa
Matriculated in 1993

Solo exhibitions

1999 Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva
1997 'Beware of Imitations', Gallery Frank Hänel, Frankfurt
1995 Rembrandt van Rijn Art Gallery, Johannesburg

Selected group exhibitions

1998 'Memorias, Intimas, Marcas', Electric Workshop, Johannesburg
1997-8 Second Johannesburg Biennale: 'Graft', SANG, Cape Town
1997 Sixth Biennale of Havana: 'The Individual and his Memory'
Fifth International Istanbul Biennial
'Atlas Papping', Offenes Kulturhaus, Linz
'Die Anderen Modernen', Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
1996 'Colours', Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
'Faultlines', Cape Town Castle
'Don't Mess with Mr In-between', Culturgest, Lisbon
1995-6 'Siyawela: Love, Loss and Liberation in South African Art', Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery
'Gay Rites/Rewrites', Maarten Melckhuis Museum, Cape Town; Oliewenhuis Museum, Bloemfontein; Wits University Art Galleries, Johannesburg

Public collections

Johannesburg Transitional Metropolitan Council
Sandton Municipal Art Gallery
South African National Gallery, Cape Town

Private collections in Johannesburg, London, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Sydney


... MWeb

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