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MOSHEKWA LANGA

Biography

Moshekwa Langa's indexical practice spans drawing, installation, video, and photography, culling materials from his immediate surroundings to record his own history and emotions. Influenced by his upbringing in a rural apartheid-era "Homeland" not included on most maps, Langa actively maps his own autobiography in his work, using significant people, events, and places in his life as a foundation to reflect on physical and psychological borders. Langa's large-scale works on paper are central to this project - often dreamlike in their appearance, they result from the accumulation of ephemeral marks and actions and the mediation of seemingly heterogenous elements. Poetic and sentimental, Langa's work seeks to create visualizations of events and feelings not translatable to language, and grapple with the slippery qualities of meaning. 

Moshekwa Langa lives and works in Amsterdam. In 2022, his work was the subject of a solo exhibition at KM21, The Hague, Netherlands. In 2021, Andrew Kreps Gallery presented the first solo exhibition of Langa's work in New York, titled The Sweets of Sin. Past solo exhibitions of Langa’s work have been presented at venues that include Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland, Modern Art Oxford, United Kingdom, The Renaissance Society, Chicago, Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In 2018, Langa’s work was included in We Don’t Need Another Hero, 10th Berlin Biennale, Germany, and The Red Hour, The 13th Dakar Biennale, Senegal. Langa additionally participated in the 2011 Lyon Biennale, the 2010 and 1998 editions of the Bienal de São Paulo, the 2009 and 2003 editions of the Venice Biennale, and the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale, curated by Okwui Enwezor. Langa's work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Tate Modern, London, and Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa, among others.

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