Meleko Mokgosi

Meleko Mokgosi (b. 1981, Francistown, Botswana) is a painter and educator whose large-scale figurative works critically examine history, democracy, colonialism and national identity. His practice merges cinematic and historical painting tropes with text, research and layered visual narratives—inviting reflection on power, representation and subjectivity. His large-scale figurative paintings and text-based canvases draw on cinematic composition, the tradition of history painting, and post-colonial theory to explore themes of nationhood, democracy, subjection, and liberation. Mokgosi’s series such as Pax Afrikaner and Pax Kaffraria examine how national identity and xenophobia are manufactured in southern Africa; his ongoing Spaces of Subjection project considers the mechanisms by which power-relations construct subjecthood across Africa and the diaspora.