Meleko Mokgosi returns to Stevenson Gallery with Speculations on Drawing, a contemplative exhibition on show until 22 August 2025. This, along with a separate exhibition currently running at Stevenson in Cape Town, marks Mokgosi’s third outing with the gallery. The new body of work expands on Mokgosi’s ongoing exploration of how individuals are shaped by social and political structures.
Best known for Democratic Intuition (2013–19), Mokgosi’s earlier work tackled the lived realities of democracy in southern Africa. Here, however, he delves into Spaces of Subjection, a more intimate, layered examination of identity, subjectivity and the mechanisms that define human experience.
This new body of work turns to drawing as both a physical act and a philosophical enquiry. Combined media include screenprint, etching, charcoal, chine collé and digital elements. Mokgosi challenges the idea of drawing as secondary. Instead, he positions it as a critical space for speculation about the body, knowledge, and the structures that govern how we see and are seen.
Exhibition notes by Meleko Mokgosi
“As a practice that conventionally concerns itself with the notion of the index, drawing seems to always centre the body, ” says artist Meleko Mokgosi. “Regardless of the presence of the body in a drawing, the body is foundational to drawing because it is the body that the drawing process depends on, and the body is “an object the proposed spaces are projected to contain.”
The discourse of art has largely privileged the indexical sign in drawing, which has in turn become a key part in the value of drawing. The indexical sign, formally defined as a sign that foregrounds the phenomenological bond between the sign and that which produces the sign, has come to mean many things: immediacy, directness, touch, gesture, signature, etc.”
Drawing is continually perceived as supplemental to other art forms: painting, sculpture, design etc. Or to put it otherwise, drawing as a conceptual tool is used by theorists and philosophers to examine the parergonal; that is, the view of drawing as always not-finished, or as something that is at the service of another iteration of art.” Read the full notes by Meleko Mokgosi here.
Need to know before you go
When: Running until 22 August 2025. Tuesday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. Saturday, 10am to 1pm
Where: Stevenson Gallery, 46 7th Ave, Parktown North, Randburg, Johannesburg
Website: stevenson.info
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 011 403 1055
Instagram: @stevenson_za
Facebook: @Stevenson.Gallery
