The winner of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2024 is Lebohang Kganye, shortlisted for the exhibition Haufi nyana? I’ve come to take you home at Foam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (17 February – 21 May 2023).
It's an honour to win the Prize and to have my name alongside this year's shortlisted artists, whose practices are critically engaging the urgent issues of our time
- Lebohang Kganye
Lebohang Kganye’s (b. 1990, South Africa) vast, experimental installations create a space between memory and fantasy. Here she collects stories from her family with excerpts from South African literature and rewrites them into theatrical scripts. Silhouettes, cut-outs, puppets, shadows and ghosts, fashioned from images in photo albums as well as her own compositions, (re-)enact these scripts and bring them to life.
The exhibition's title, "Haufi nyana?" meaning "too close?" in Sesotho, one of South Africa's official languages, reflects the dialogue between the viewer and the artist. It touches on notions of home as heritage and identity, as well as physical and mental spaces. Her skilful blending of images and words allows her to navigate the complexity of the South African experience, opening new ways of understanding and contributing to the process of decolonisation.
Through photographic montages, installations and film animation, Kganye’s projects cross personal and collective histories. She draws from shared oral narratives and fictional texts, exploring South Africa’s layered history before, during and after apartheid and colonialism.
Her work Mohlokomedi wa Tora (2018) will be on display at The Photographers’ Gallery. In the large-scale installation, Kganye uses silhouettes and life-sized cut-out figures. She considers the impact of her family’s migration, due to land acts and apartheid law, including the alteration of their surname. Through symbolic elements such as a central rotating light representing the Sesotho word for ‘light’, kganya, she illustrates her ancestral inheritance.
Lebohang Kganye’s innovative use of photography brings together past and present to explore the political through deeply personal stories of her own family and history. Sometimes theatrical, always experimental, her use of photography and her own archives is powerful and refreshing.
- Clare Grafik, Acting Director of The Photographers’ Gallery and Chair of the Jury
About Lebohang Kganye
Lebohang Kganye (b 1990, South Africa) is a photographer also working with sculptural, performative, theatrical and moving image. Kganye’s work explores themes of personal history and ancestry whilst resonating with the history of South Africa and apartheid. She incorporates the archival and performative into her practice that centres storytelling and memory in the familial experience.
Lebohang Kganye received her introduction to photography at the Market Photo Workshop, in Johannesburg, in 2009 and completed the Advanced Photography Programme in 2011. She obtained a Diploma in Fine Arts from the University of Johannesburg in 2014 and is currently doing her Masters in Fine Arts at the Witwatersrand University. Kganye’s work has been exhibited internationally, at Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan; Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto; Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, Amsterdam; the Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg, South Africa and many more. Notable recent awards include the Foam Paul Huf Award 2022, Grand Prix Images Vevey 2021/22, Paulo Cunha e Silva Art Prize, 2020, Camera Austria Award, 2019.
Buy one of these Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2024 exhibition catalogues before they go! Four different covers available for the shortlisted artists: VALIE EXPORT, Gauri Gill & Rajesh Vangad, Lebohang Kganye and Hrair Sarkissian.
Browse our full selection of books by Lebohang Kganye in store or online.
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