Jack Ginsberg Centre for the Book Arts


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Lebohang Kganye

Johannesburg

KE SALE TENK (2017)

Type of book work: Single channel video Duration: 3:22

Artist's / designer's statements

This project is an excavation of my family history through family albums. Sometimes we rely on the family photo album as a way to understand what family is meant to be. What we often land up with is a grouping of images that have been constructed, and perhaps do not account at all for the histories and memories that are connected with that album.

I am not suggesting that these photo albums are a lie but that they present a challenge of how we read into them. My work begins with my own family album and questions what has been omitted from this album, what memories are not been translated through the pictures, what role does a family photo album play in the present?

Family photographs are more than just a documentation of events that have occurred, it is a space for us to project what we can recall and perhaps a space to question and invent a new history per se. I am interested in how albums no longer have a fixed narrative but instead open us to reinterpret our past and perhaps this kind of reinterpretation, questions why we find family albums so important or perhaps we do not.

The more I researched my family history, it becomes apparent that family history remains a space of contradictions, it is a mixture of truth and fiction. Photo albums are arranged as if to tell life stories and testimonies and build identities, however the image is never 'complete' we are only presented with visual clues that allows our own imaginaries to further 'complete' the story.

More so in my exploration of my family album, I begin to find myself as an outsider trying to construct an archive, by rearranging images to complete a story, truth or fiction. Such archives do not reveal easy answers, for me it reveals that time can break apart and reconnect and not quite fit back into one another.

Artist / Student

Education

2011 Advanced Photography Programme at the Market Photo Workshop, Johannesburg
2016 NDip. Fine Art, University of Johannesburg, South Africa

Solo Exhibitions

2016 The Armory Show, Afronova, New York, USA
2013 Ke Lefa Laka, Market Photo Workshop Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

Selected Recent Group Exhibitions

2017
Nathi.Aha.Sasa. / Us.Here.Now., curated by Zohra Opoku, Wiener Festwochen, Vienna, Austria
Recent Histories, The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm, Germany
1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair, AFRONOVA GALLERY, Pioneer Works, New York, USA
Les Territoires du Corps, Black Box, Art Paris, Grand Palais, Paris, France
Le jour qui vient, Galerie des Galeries, Paris, France
2016-2017 Give Me Yesterday, Prada Foundation, Milan, Italy
2016 1:54 African Contemporary Art Fair, Afronova, Somerset House, London, UK
1:54 African Contemporary Art Fair, Afronova, Pioneer Works, New York, USA
Studio Bamako, European Month of Photography, Kehrer Gallery, Berlin, Germany
Recent Histories, New Photography from Africa, The Walther Collection Project Space, New York, USA
2016 L'Autre Continent, Artistes, Femmes, Africaines, Muséum du Havre, Le Havre, France
Photo Biennale, Cities and Memory, Brandts, Odense, Denmark
KIN, HANGAR Centro de Investigação Artística, Lisbon, Portugal
2015
Winner of the Jury Prize "Coup de Coeur", Bamako Encounters 2015, Bamako, Mali
1:54 African Contemporary Art Fair, Afronova, Pioneer Works, New York, USA
The View from Here, Tiwani Contemporary, London, UK
Stone Kraal, International Schillertage, Mannheim, Germany
Now you see me, Now you don't, International Schillertage, Mannheim, Germany
Trek, Following Journeys, SMAC Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2014
Short Change, My Joburg, Market Photo Workshop Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Sasol New Signatures, Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, South Africa
Young '14, Bag Factory Artist Studios, Johannesburg, South Africa
Femme Photographe, ONOMO Hotel, Dakar, Senegal
2013
Sculptural Premise, Stevenson, Cape Town, South Africa
Apartheid and After, Huis Marsielle, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Photoville, Brooklyn Bridge Park, New York, USA
The Suit, Copy Shop, Cape Town, South Africa
Short Change, My Joburg, La Maison Rouge, Paris, France 2012
Rememory, William Goodenough House, London, UK
Sasol New Signatures, Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, South Africa
Happily Never After, AVA Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2011
aolafe Saam, Market Photo Workshop Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Between 10 and 5, Jo'burg Art Fair, Market Photo Workshop Stall, Johannesburg, South Africa