Notes

‘Mohau Modisakeng uses self-portrait, in the forms of photography, video and performance, 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 beginning of the Twentieth century was in actual fact 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.’¹

1. Generazione Critica, ‘Endabeni – Mohau Modisakeng’, http://www.generazionecritica.it/ en/mohau-modisakeng/

Literature

Gerhard Mulder (ed) (2017) Mohau Modisakeng, WHATIFTHEWORLD: Cape Town, illustrated in colour on page 126.