Motswana Painter Wins American Prize
Correspondent | Monday February 6, 2017 16:50
The Vilcek Foundation (www.Vilcek.org) says the prizes were designed to recognise and support emerging immigrant artists who have made outstanding contributions to American society, and each include a cash prize of $50,000. Mokgosi is described as a slow, considered painter; behind every painting he produces are hours of research, reading, and conversations with people.
Mokgosi is interested in depictions of Africa and its people; he believes that the widespread misrepresentation of Africa and Africans has done a violence to the people of the continent, and through his art, he attempts a representation that is fair and just, according to the Foundation. Mokgosi is also described as deeply concerned with politics, and seeks to understand and to illuminate the relations of power that shape people, families, villages, regions, and nations. Mokgosi has been named the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters Grant and the Jarl and Pamela Mohn Award, he has shown his work at Art Basel, the Armory, the Hammer Museum, and the Whitney Museum.
The foundation says the prizewinners were selected by panels of experts in a variety of artistic disciplines. The jury panel for the Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Fine Arts included Nicholas Baume, director and chief curator of the Public Art Fund; Naomi Beckwith, curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Rita Gonzalez, associate curator of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hitomi Iwasaki, director of exhibitions/curator at the Queens Museum of Art; and Thomas J. Lax, associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art.
Along with other prizewinners, Mokgosi will be honored at a ceremony in New York City in April 2017, says the statement from the Foundation.
In addition to prizes in fine arts, the Vilcek Foundation is also recognising immigrants in the sciences with the 2017 Vilcek Prizes in Biomedical Science.