Mohau Modisakeng (b. 1986) is a South African multidisciplinary artist working in photography, film, performance and installation whose practice centres on the black body as a site where history, trauma, displacement and contested identity are simultaneously inscribed and challenged. Born in Soweto and educated at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, he has developed a formally rigorous and politically searching body of work that has attracted significant international attention over the past decade.
Modisakeng’s images are carefully staged and formally precise, using costume, gesture, symbolic objects and ritualised action to create compositions that are at once visually arresting and historically dense. His recurring themes include the legacies of colonial and apartheid-era labour regimes, the experience of military service and conscription, the material and psychological violence of displacement and the question of how bodies marked by history might make those markings visible.
His work refuses direct illustration or protest, preferring instead a symbolic density that requires active engagement from the viewer. This formal restraint, combined with political seriousness, characterises the most significant work to emerge from his generation.
Modisakeng received the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 2016, one of South Africa’s most coveted awards for emerging artists. He has also represented South Africa at major international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale. His work is held in prominent South African and international collections and has been exhibited in institutions across Europe, Africa and North America.
He is regarded as one of the most compelling and formally accomplished artists of his generation working in contemporary South African art.
