THE WORK OF SHADOWS : LEBOHANG KGANYE

La Patinoire Royale Bach’s museum-like nave is filled with Lebohang Kganye’s large scale installations in The Work of Shadows, the artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. 

The exhibition features four major bodies of work from the artist's recent practice. A Burden Consumed in Sips (2023) is a massive, immersive 22-panel video installation the artist made in Cameroun as she followed a colonial era expedition in reverse: symbolically returning objects that had been extracted. Mosebetsi wa Dirithi (2023-2024) are large-scale textile works that feature monumental scale portraits of the artist’s family members. Keep the Light Faithfully (2022) is a series of diorama lightboxes with layered photographic cutouts of the artist reenacting stories she gathered from oral testimonies of South African lighthouse workers. Mohlokomedi wa Tora (2018) is a large-scale circular installation that brings together four scenes from different parts of the artist’s family tree, an exploration of migration, genealogy and light.

The South African artist, (b. 1990) 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.

Viewing Room