Keneilwe Mokoena

Keneilwe Mokoena (b. 1988) is an artist, educator and curator from Pretoria, based in Johannesburg.  Her multi-media collages present deconstruction as a tender way of seeking to understand and magnify parts of herself and the natural world around her. It is insightfully articulated in The Forces of Nature that “The natural world is beautiful but complex. But it’s even more beautiful to understand.” Each component of her collages indicates a journey of curiosity, looking into the smallest micro-organisms of life that carry meaning, and gazing outward into the immeasurable distance of the cosmos. Through this process, she acknowledges the beauty and chaos of living. This is followed by a delicate reconstruction of images that invoke the undeniable connection between oneself and the natural world. She merges incredibly detailed drawings, piercing self-portraits, disembodied text, and symbolic images to re-assemble the chaos into something vulnerable and resilient. Something resembling order.  

Keneilwe Mokoena (b. 1988) is a visual artist, educator and curator from Pretoria, currently living and working in Johannesburg, South Africa. She received a National Diploma in Fine Arts from the Tshwane University of Technology. Her work has been exhibited in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Grahamstown. After receiving the Reinhold Cassirer Award in 2015, she was an artist in residence at the Bag Factory for 3 months.  Mokoena has curated several exhibitions for Capital Arts Revolution – a collective of artists from Pretoria, and Social Life of Waste art network (SLOW), a network of artists, researchers, writers, gardeners and community developers, within the discourse of waste. She is also an art facilitator and has facilitated workshops for school children in association with Capital Arts Revolution and the American Embassy.  In her recent collaboration with the David Krut Workshop, she produced two intricate drypoint prints and is currently working on a series of watercolour monotypes. While the majority of her works are drawings and paintings, she also creates both private and public installations. A land art installation made in collaboration with fellow artist, Banele Khoza was shown at Venice Biennale 2015-16 at the South African Architectural Pavilion as part of the Cool Capital Biennale.  On her tumblr page, Mokoena prefaces her work with the slogan, “Microcosm to macrocosm. Mind and matter. Organic and inorganic. Everything is bound by self-similar patterns of order and chaos.”  In her drawings, she depicts enlarged formations of bacteria, viruses, and parasites as if they have been placed under a microscope. “I like to depict the finer details of the natural world”, she explains, “details which the eye doesn’t immediately see”. 

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