Born in Soweto in 1986, Mohau Modisakeng completed an undergraduate degree in 2009 and a Master’s degree in 2014 at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town.

Using sculpture, installation, performance and photography, his work engages with the violence of colonial and apartheid history in South Africa, and Africa more broadly, and how the ways in which ignoring or remembering that past affects the cultural and political roles that people play in contemporary society.

Modisakeng has won numerous awards, including the Sasol New Signatures Award in 2011 and the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art in 2016. He has exhibited widely internationally and his work is included in prominent public, corporate and private collections such as Zeitz MOCAA and the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town; the Saatchi Gallery, London; and the Johannesburg Art Gallery.