In 2022, Lebohang Kganye won the 16th edition of the Foam Paul Huf Award. Subsequently, Foam is now proud to announce her solo exhibition Haufi nyana? I’ve come to take you home. Although her work has been featured in many group shows all over the world, this is her first solo exhibition in the Netherlands.
The artistic practice of Lebohang Kganye, who lives and works in Johannesburg, is focused on exploring the personal and collective ‘micro histories’ of her family. It is embedded in the wider history of South Africa from before, during, and in the aftermath of apartheid and colonialism. Her work is largely informed by oral narratives and texts — she collects stories about the impact of apartheid on her family along with plots from South African literature. Words are translated into a ‘play’ or theatrical scripts, and images, sourced from vernacular albums or produced by the artist, are turned into settings, silhouettes, cut-outs, puppets, shadows or even ghosts that fill the imaginative space between words. Kganye is interested in the dynamics between memory and fantasy that photography and storytelling jointly create. The constructed nature of both images and words allows her to bridge gaps in (collective) memory. Effortlessly moving within the sphere of possibilities, Kganye develops methods of decolonizing the medium of photography and South African cultural heritage.
‘Haufi nyana?’ means ‘Too close?’ in Sesotho, one of the eleven official languages of South Africa. The exhibition title refers to the nature of the dialogue between a viewer and the artist: how far can one enter a photographic autobiography on the one hand, and how much can one share a personal story on the other? It also refers to the idea of ‘home’ — which can be far, close, or too close… perhaps even simultaneously. Haufi nyana? I’ve come to take you home showcases four projects from the artist’s oeuvre, spanning the last decade. Each emphasises the complex visual vocabulary of the artist, and the diversity of media and approaches she engages with — from photographic montages (Ke Lefa Laka: Her-Story, 2013) to spatial installation (Mohlokomedi wa Tora, 2018), and from film animation (Shadows of Re-Memory, 2021) to patchwork (Mosebetsi wa Dirithi, 2022).
