In the New York Times, Holland Cotter writes on Lebohang Kganye in the exhibition New Photography 2025: Lines of Belonging at MoMA.
One of the show’s outstanding entries, though, and one that stretches the definition of photography furthest, projects genuinely positive vision, even if it’s only a fantasy. Using large-scale cutouts of photographed figures attached to a motorized metal frame, the Johannesburg artist Lebohang Kganye has staged a fictional narrative tableau about the return of the South African leader Nelson Mandela, who died in 2013, to earth.
In two-minute cycles, we watch a resurrection: Mandela’s figure rises before us, casting his shadow, immense, on the gallery walls, before sinking from view. With every reappearance a small figure rises too, with arms stretched out toward him. It’s a portrait of the artist.
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