Endabeni – Mohau Modisakeng

South-African artist Mohau Modisakeng uses self-portrait, in the forms of photogrpahy, video and performace, to propose his own reflections on the imagery that surrounding the black body, particularly the South-African one. A body that is inevitably connected to the ideas of violence and linked to the crimes of apartheid and racial segregation that was in effect until the Nineties. His physicality is almost sculptural in works such as Endabeni, a photographic series that was realised in the suburb of Ndabeni, near Cape Town, a location that at the beginnning of the Twentieth century was in actual facts the first official settlement for segregation. Modisakeng never depicts violence directly in his works but, through a system of references, symbols and metaphors, he is able to represent the fear and anxiety that are originated from the social and political tensions, still alive in the country.

Mohau Modisakeng, Endabeni, 2016.

© Mohau Modisakeng 2016