Santu Mofokeng
Press Information
November 11 - December 20 2003, Tuesday - Saturday, 11 am - 6 pm
Opening: Saturday, November 8, 6 pm
We are pleased to announce the first solo exhibition by Santu Mofokeng in our gallery. The artist, who lives in Johannesburg and Berlin, attracted much attention at the Documenta 11 with his black-and-white photos. The exhibition “Chasing
Shadows” in 1999 at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures) presented him to the Berlin public. Santu Mofokeng calls David Goldblatt his mentor and stands in the tradition of reporting and landscape photography. Along with his feeling for the perfect moment, Mofokeng has developed the ability to grasp very precisely the political, cultural, and religious charge of a place in its entire complexity.
“Perhaps the title should read Township and Billboard. Billboards have been the medium of communication between the rulers and the denizens of townships since the beginning of the township. The billboard is a fact and feature of township landscape. It is a relic from the times when Africans were subjects of power and the township was a restricted area; subject to laws, municipality by-laws and ordinances regulating people’s movements and governing who may or may not enter the township. It is without irony when I say that billboards can be used as reference points when plotting the history and development of the township. Billboards capture and encapsulate ideology, the social, economic and political climate at any given time. They retain their appeal for social engineering. (...)
I read somewhere that ads create a sense of participating in the utopia of beauty: Life as it should be. A drive from the city into Soweto will quickly dispel this notion as misguided. Billboards line the freeway on both sides. In the name of freedom of speech one’s cultural sensibility is assaulted by textual and visual messages. The trip can hardly be described as boring. Nobody ever complains of the visual pollution. At the high speed of a minibus taxi, the billboards roll by like flipping pages in a book. The retina registers arcane and inane messages about sex and cell-phones, mostly sex and cell-phones. Perhaps this is a coincidence. I
wonder.” (Santu Mofokeng 2003)
Born in 1956 in Johannesburg, South Africa, lives in Johannesburg and Berlin.
Exhibitions 1999 - 2004 (selection):
2004 | Centre Photographique d’Ile de France, Pontault Combault F (s) | 2003 | “Veme Rencontres de la Photographie Africaine de Bamako” (gr); “Sharjah Biennale 6”, U.A.E. (gr); “Mali On Sacred Ground”, Africalia 03, Memling Museum, Brugge | 2001 | “Àfriques l´artista i la ciotat”, CCCB, Barcelona, Spain (gr); “The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945-1994”, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, USA (gr) | 2000 | “Sad Landscapes”, Camouflage Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (s) | 1999 | “Chasing Shadows”, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (s); “The Black Photo Album - Johannesburg, 1890-1950”, L’Atelier de Visu, Marseille, France (s); “The Black Photo Album / Look At Me (photos)”, FNAC Montparnasse, F (s)