LEBOHANG KGANYE

Kganye is the recipient of the Deutsche Börse Foundation Prize, 2024 for her exhibition Haufi Nyana? I’ve Come to Take you Home, which took place at Foam, Amsterdam (2023). Other notable recent awards include the Foam Paul Huf Award, 2022, Grand Prix Images Vevey, 2021/22; and Camera Austria Award, 2019.

The artist has recently exhibited at TATE, The Barnes Foundation, the Art Institute of Chicago, Yale University Art Gallery, and others. In 2022, Kganye was one of three artists exhibited in Into the Light, the South African Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale. 

Kganye’s work is held in public collections including the Smithsonian Institution, the Art Institute of Chicago, Getty Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Victoria and Albert Museum, Verbund Collection, Walther Collection, and Carnegie Art Museum, among others.

Working often with the concepts of “postmemory” and “rememory” (as defined by Marianne Hirsch and Toni Morrison respectively), and often in an autobiographical lens, Kganye in Shadows of Re-Memory (2021) evokes hauntology not based on familial narratives, but this time on literary pieces: plays The Road to Mecca (1984) and The Train Driver (2010) by South African playwright Athol Fugard, and the non-fiction Maverick: Extraordinary Women from South Africa's Past (2004) by Lauren Beukes.

Lebohang Kganye spent weeks walking along the gravel roads of Nieu Bethesda where Fugard worked. During her stay, the artist interviewed local residents: a restorer, a beekeeper, a violin string maker, and a translator of Fugard’s books. The stories she collected morph with literary plots, memory and fantasy to  constitute the scenes of the film.

Watch the film below.

Password: ShadowsOfRe-Memory2021.