Meleko Mokgosi: Bread, Butter, and Power
@ Smart Museum of Art
5550 S Greenwood Ave, Chicago, IL 60637
Opening Saturday, October 19th, from 2PM - 4:30PM
On view through Sunday, December 15th
Join us for an afternoon of intimate, gallery-based discussions celebrating the opening of ‘Meleko Mokgosi: Bread, Butter, and Power.’
FREE, open to all. Refreshments provided.
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2 pm
Artist Talk
Artist Meleko Mokgosi in conversation with Erica P. Jones, Associate Curator of African Arts at the Fowler Museum at UCLA.
3:30 pm
Panel: Writer and Citizen
Presented in collaboration with Humanities Day 2019 at the University of Chicago.
This discussion about the social reach of writing in such arenas as environmental catastrophe and indigenous representation ponders the responsibility of the writer to act as citizen, extending the domain of citizenship beyond conventional legal and political realms, and to test the limits of citizenship as discourse, as its protections are being denied to increasing numbers of persons. Participants: Jennifer Scappettone (Associate Professor in the Departments of English Language and Literature and Romance Languages and Literatures), Lina Ferreira (Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature), Edgar Garcia (Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language), and Stephanie Soileau (Assistant Professor of Practice in the Arts in the Department of English Language and Literature).
About the Exhibition
Meleko Mokgosi’s large-scale episodic painting cycle Bread, Butter, and Power forms the newest chapter in his ongoing series Democratic Intuition, which seeks to explore ideas about the many ways that democratic concepts influence our lives, loves, and relationships on macro- and micro-levels.
This twenty-panel installation interrogates the theme of feminism in the context of southern Africa, and considers the consequences of dividing labor practices by gender.
Mokgosi’s approach to storytelling through the form of history painting allows us to compare what we see in the paintings to the realities of inequality and gendered labor division we know from experience. This approach to the content also inspires us to think expansively about politics, power structures, and the role of history in the creation of the current nations of southern Africa.
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Tags: Bread Butter and Power, Chicago, Hyde Park, Meleko Mokgosi, Smart Museum of Art
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