FAACCE Verified
"Mokoena began this work after spending six months mapping the routes her family travelled during the forced removals of the 1960s."
South Africa · Fine Art
Cartography of Kin
Lebo Mokoena
FAACCE Curated
Songs of the Iroko
Lagos, Nigeria·Fine Art
- Medium
- Oil and indigo on linen
- Dimensions
- 180 × 140 cm
- Year
- 2024
- Certificate
- FA-2024-0041 →
$ 14,800
Indicative — acquisition is dialogue, not checkout.
Authenticated by the FAACCE Curatorial Council. View certificate.
Story behind the work
Painted across the long rains of 2024, Songs of the Iroko begins with the artist's grandmother — a woman who spoke to trees the way others speak to elders. The iroko, sacred across the Yoruba world, is rendered here not as botany but as kin: an inheritance of breath and memory passed quietly between generations.
A monumental study in indigo and ochre, layered with hand-ground pigment, fixing the iroko at the precise moment between dusk and ancestor.
Curatorial note
FAACCE Curatorial Council
"Selected for the FAACCE Contemporary African Art collection for its rigorous material practice and its refusal of the exoticised botanical trope."
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