January 20 through June 10, 2023
Meleko Mokgosi: Imaging Imaginations
Art Gallery of York University, Accolade East Building
Extended gallery hours for Congress: 10 am – 5 pm

Curator-led gallery tours by Felicia Mings
May 29, May 30, and May 31, 1 – 2 pm

Meleko Mokgosi is well known for his imposing and vivid multi-panel paintings that feature hyper-realistic depictions of Black figures within narrative scenes that prompt us to question the ethics of democracy, structures of power, and forms of knowledge. For Imaging Imaginations, Mokgosi debuts new works from his latest series, Spaces of Subjection, 2022. Within this growing body of work, Mokgosi draws from French philosopher Michel Foucault’s writing in essays such as “The Subject and Power,” 1982, to consider questions of self-fashioning and self-determination within different physical spaces, cultural and national locations, and stages of maturation. The artworks on view query the role of images as societal forces that inform our sense of self and relation to others, or, in other words, subjecthood.

Meleko Mokgosi is a Botswanan-born US-based artist and educator. He is Associate Professor at the Yale University’s School of Art and co-founder of The Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program in New York City. He received his MFA from the Interdisciplinary Studio Program at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2011 and received a BA from Williams College in 2007. Mokgosi has participated in numerous residencies and has exhibited widely in both group and solo exhibitions. His most recent solo exhibitions including Currents 122: Meleko Mokgosi, Saint Louis Art Museum, MO (2022–2023); Pan-African Pulp, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI (2019–2022); Scripto-visual, The Current, Stowe, VT (2021); and Your Trip to Africa, Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL (2020–2021).

May 27 – December 2, 2023
Erica Stocking: MotherGinger Promenade
AGYU Vitrines, Accolade East Building Colonnade (north side of building)

MotherGinger by visual artist Erica Stocking is named after the iconic drag character from Russian composer Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker. Stocking’s MotherGinger is an ongoing project with multiple forms from performances to pop up shops to this installation, for which she has transformed the AGYU vitrines into stylized containers — evoking closets, window displays, and travel trunks.

Ongoing performance: Various garments from MotherGinger Promenade will be removed from the vitrines and worn throughout Congress at York University (Keele Campus). An extended performance will also occur on June 10 at 3 pm.

Erica Stocking is an artist working at the intersection of sculpture, performance, and installation, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Visual Arts at York University.

May 30, 2023
RISE Film Screening
Price Family Cinema, Accolade East Building
Screening and panel discussion: 6 – 7:30 pm
Reception to follow in the AGYU lobby.
Sponsored by Partners in Art

Commissioned by AGYU in 2018, the short film RISE by Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca (Brazil and Ireland) is a culmination of staged and improvised performances from nearly 30 performers from Toronto’s Jane Finch and Scarborough neighbourhoods, created in conjunction with the Truth be Told Spoken Word mentorship program led by AGYU Education and Community Engagement Coordinator, Allyson Adley.

Following the screening will be a conversation with two performers from the film, Canadian Hip-hop legend Michie Mee and Ontario’s first Poet Laureate Randell Adjei, moderated by Allyson Adley.