Jenkins Johnson Projects, New York, is pleased to present A Promised Land, the first New York solo exhibition of South African artist Mohau Modisakeng. This exhibition marks the New York debut of the artist’s ZION video installation, an outgrowth of his landmark site-specific processional performance of the same name commissioned for the 2017 Performa Biennial. The ZION video activates sites resonant to the long history of Black settlements in New York City, including Seneca Village, a 19th century Black community eradicated to make way for the development of Central Park. Among the works featured in the exhibition are several large-scale photographs that harness and transmute the emotion of what it means to be dispersed and displaced. Also included in the show are selections from Modisakeng’s Passage, which debuted at the South Africa pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Modisakeng’s work engages themes of race, forced migration, the deep divides of post-apartheid South Africa, the post-colonial African continent, and the Global Black Diaspora as a whole.
A Promised Land: Mohau Modisakeng
Past exhibition
