“vocabularies, in one sense, are maps of different life-worlds of knowledge, including their hierarchies” Gautam Bhan, Notes on a southern urban practice (2019)

Taking Form is an art research-led programme by the Banana Club Artist Fund (BCAF) that explores how artistic languages are formed within contemporary practices from Botswana and the wider region. The project looks at how various artists, curators, educators and researchers articulate their work from within their practices and beyond inherited Western vocabularies. Through this process of assembling language, new forms of expression emerge from lived experience, local conditions, and artistic practice.

Taking the scholar Gautam Bhan’s positioning of vocabularies, and by attending to the question of language, the programme opens into research which is durational, as a series of conversations, closed working sessions, interviews, and archival inquiries. The programme unfolds as an eight-month research and curatorial process, with the practitioners from the BCAF curatorial team, Tanlume Enyatseng and Keamogetse Mosienyane. 

Through this approach, Banana Club positions dialogue, writing, and collaborative inquiry as core artistic methods, while contributing to the development of a critical vocabulary for contemporary art practices in Botswana.

We are honored that our first public conversation within this inquiry is alongside mentorship from the artist and educator Meleko Mokgosi. 

Virtual Talk 

Assembling Language
Meleko Mokgosi in conversation with Banana Club Artist Fund

Moderated by Don Handa

Public Virtual Talk
05 March 2026
19:00 CAT

RSVP here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/YfWD2M5WRhC4fDQ0db6htg#/registration 

Event Description:

This online conversation brings together Meleko Mokgosi and Don Handa to examine how artistic language is formed within contemporary practice.

The event opens Taking Form, a research-led programme developed and led by the Banana Club Artist Fund (BCAF). The programme investigates how contemporary art practices emerging from Botswana articulate themselves beyond inherited Western vocabularies, addressing questions of framing, authorship, public formation, and artistic autonomy.

Rather than offering conclusions, this discussion initiates a broader inquiry that will unfold through further dialogue and research.

Presented in partnership with the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg through LAPA.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Meleko Mokgosi

Meleko Mokgosi (born in Francistown, Botswana; lives and works in Wellesley, MA) is an artist, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the Yale School of Art, and the co-founder and director of the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program (https://www.artandtheoryprogram.org). 

Mokgosi received his BA from Williams College in 2007 and participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study program that same year. He then received his MFA from the Interdisciplinary Studio Program at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2011. He participated in the Rauschenberg Residency at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Captiva, FL in 2015 and the Artist in Residence Program at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY in 2012. 

His large-scale, figurative, and often text-based works engage history painting and cinematic tropes to investigate historiography, democracy, and liberation movements across Africa and the diaspora. His most recent body of work, Spaces of Subjection, examines subjection and subjectivity as they pertain to perspectives on African, African American, and Black life. 

His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, recently with solo exhibitions at the St. Louis Art Museum, York University Art Gallery, The Pérez Art Museum Miami, Williams College Museum of Art, Rochester Contemporary Art Center, and the University of Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery, The Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, PA; California African American Museum; Raleigh Contemporary Art Museum; Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Sweden and the 12th Biennale de Lyon; other venues include the Botswana National Gallery, Gaborone, Botswana; The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art Museum, Peekskill, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture Center, Los Angeles, CA; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA. His work is included in public collections such as The St. Louis Art Museum, The Pérez Art Museum Miami; The Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA; The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art for Rollins College, Winter Park, FL; the Colby Museum of Art, Waterville, ME; and Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris.

Don Handa

Don Handa is a curator based in Nairobi, Kenya, whose practice centers East Africa’s cultural and political contexts. Since 2022, he has served as curator at the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute (NCAI), where he develops exhibitions, programs, and educational projects. Recent exhibitions include Syowia’ Kyambi’s KASPALE (2023),  Sahej Rahal’s Wayfinder (2024), Xenson’s Olidde Mupipa(2024), and Chelenge Van Rampelberg’s retrospective The Long Way Home (2023). Handa is interested in exploring collaborative formats to contextualize artistic practices emerging from/in relation to the context of East Africa.