Palesa Mokwena

BIOGRAPHY

Palesa Mokwena is a PhD student at the University of Stellenbosch. She received a master’s degree (Cum Laude) in Art History from Rhodes University In 2020. Her Master’s degree shows how creative productions have assisted philosophical works and how the arts, feminism and existentialism are allies rather than separate practices that do not share common ground.  Mokwena has worked as an Assistant Curator and Educator for the Pretoria Art Museum (2016-2017), a Pinhole Photography workshop Coordinator and Curator for Pretoria Street Photography (2016-2017), Art Theory II in-Class & Writing tutor (2017-2018) and recently as a part time Lecturer for Visual Theory III & IV at the Tshwane University of Technology (2023-2025). Mokwena’s research interests include; Performance Art, Black Existentialism, Womanism, Poetry, African Spiritualism, The Harlem Renaissance and The Black Consciousness Movement. 

RESEARCH

Title: The Black Consciousness Movement, Lefifi Tladi and Epistemic Freedom

Born at Lady Selborne, Pretoria in 1949, Tladi is a visual artist, poet, Jazz singer and drummer currently based in Sweden. Tladi was a Black Consciousness activist known for his political and artistic contributions during and after apartheid South Africa.

 Mokwena has chosen to study Lefifi Tladi’s work because his artwork is not sufficiently researched in South Africa. An investigation into Tladi’s work can serve as a template for a conception of Black Consciousness creative productions that have not yet been historicised, and this will open up a broader conversation on works of art that have been excluded from the canon.

The history or literature of South African Visual Art shows a lack of engagement with the black art which came out of the Black Consciousness tradition. While attempts have been made to include certain artists into the canon of historical South African visual art, most artists are left out of the canon. Mokwena’s aim is to find ways that black art can be engaged with and explored.

While her research is cross-disciplinary (visual Art, Poetry, Jazz, Philosophy) it will use critical visual and literary analyses to engage creative productions of the artist, Lefifi Tladi. Doing so  will show the presence of Black Consciousness as well as black existentialism in his work. My focus will be broad, in order to trace the trajectories of Tladi’s art and music in tandem with developments in black intellectual thought.