During the exhibition opening for Lebohang Kganye's solo exhibition The Work of Shadows on April 23rd, at 6 pm, the artist will be in dialogue with Renée Mussai, London-based curator, writer and scholar of visual culture with a special interest in Black feminist practices.
About Lebohang Kganye
Lebohang Kganye (b. 1990, South Africa) works with expanded photography, video and mixed media to create deeply researched works that layer historiography, theatricality, autobiography and poetics in often sculptural installations. The artist’s name is etymologically linked to the Sotho word for light “kganya” and bringing light and life to layered postcolonial histories is an animating thread in her practice.
Renée Mussai
Renée Mussai is an independent London-based curator, writer and scholar of visual culture with a special interest in Black feminist practices. Formerly senior curator and head of collection at arts charity / gallery Autograph, she is currently senior research associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre (VIAD), University of Johannesburg, associate lecturer at University of the Arts London and guest tutor at Sotheby’s Art Institute.
Her publications include ‘Black Chronicles: Photography, Race and Difference in Victorian Britain’ and ‘Eyes That Commit—A Visual Gathering’ (both forthcoming in 2025), and several award-winning artist monographs such as Zanele Muholi’s ‘Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness’ (2018, and 2024) and Lina Iris Viktor’s ‘Some Are Born to Endless Night—Dark Matter’ (2020), amongst other books.
She lectures, publishes and curates internationally, and since 2009 has organised numerous critically acclaimed solo and group exhibitions in Europe, South Africa and America; including most recently ‘Mickalene Thomas: All About Love’ (2024) for the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, USA. Mussai presently serves as chair of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation advisory council.
