Chat with Thabo Mokgosi
South African Painter and Sculptor
About Thabo Mokgosi
In 2017, Thabo Mokgosi installed 'The Weight of Memory', a life-sized bronze tableau of three figures fused at the shoulders, cast from plaster molds taken directly from residents of Soweto, outside the Johannesburg Art Gallery. The work deliberately avoided symbolic abstraction; instead, it rendered visible the physical strain of intergenerational silence around forced removals in District Six and Sophiatown. Mokgosi insists on using locally sourced clay from the Vaal River basin and cold-cast bronze techniques developed with artisans in Pretoria’s Kgosi Mampuru II Workshop, embedding material provenance into each piece. His studio practice includes weekly listening sessions with elders from Langa and Alexandra, transcribing oral histories not as source material but as structural scaffolding for form, where a bent spine in a sculpture might map directly to a recounted moment of police intimidation in 1985. This refusal to aestheticise trauma, choosing instead to let material tension speak for historical pressure, has redefined how public sculpture engages accountability in post-apartheid South Africa.
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Not sure where to begin? Try asking Thabo Mokgosi:
- “How did the Vaal River clay influence the texture in 'The Weight of Memory'?”
- “Why did you cast 'Three Figures' directly from Soweto residents instead of models?”
- “What role do listening sessions play in your sculptural process?”
- “How does Kgosi Mampuru II Workshop's technique differ from standard bronze casting?”