Meleko Mokgosi: Democratic Intuition

This richly illustrated book documents Meleko Mokgosi’s Democratic Intuition (2013–20), an eight-part epic painting cycle that includes multi-panel depictions of southern African life and folklore. Mokgosi engages the notion that the function of democracy is dependent upon accessible education and explores the internal contradictions of that theory through compelling genre scenes—often involving prominent figures from African public life—that jump-cut between the confines of manual work, the freedoms of intellectual enterprise, and their ties to gender and race.

Published in a limited edition by Pacific in collaboration with Jack Shainman Gallery, the catalogue features essays by Jessica Bell Brown, Seph Rodney, and Debora Silverman, as well as an interview between Mokgosi and Antwaun Sargent that offers insight into the artist’s interdisciplinary investigation of postcolonial nationhood and democratic process.