Lebohang Kganye (b. 1990, Katlehong, South Africa) lives and works in Johannesburg. Kganye received her introduction to photography at the Market Photo Workshop, in Johannesburg, in 2009 and completed the Advanced Photography Program in 2011. She obtained a Diploma in Fine Arts from the University of Johannesburg in 2014 and is currently completing her master’s in fine arts at the Witwatersrand University. Notable awards include the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2021/22, Paulo Cunha e Silva Art Prize, 2020, Camera Austria Award, 2019 and was the finalist of the Rolex Mentor & Protégé Arts Initiative, 2019. As winner of the Foam Paul Huf Award 2022, in 2023 Kganye held her first survey exhibition Haufi nyana? I’ve come to take you home in Europe at Foam, Amsterdam. A solo exhibition Shall you Return Everything, but the Burden of Kganye’s newly commissioned works is currently presented by the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, Cologne.
Earlier solo exhibitions include: Ternary Memories of Yesterday (Galleri Image, Aarhus, Denmark), Dipina tsa Kganya: Leave the Light on When You Leave for Good (Georgian House Museum, Bristol, UK), The Stories We Tell: Memory as Material, at George Bizos Gallery, the Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg, South Africa (2020); Ke Lefa Laka: Her-story, Le Molière, Paris, France (2019); Mohlokomedi wa Tora, Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, South Africa (2018); Ke Lefa Laka: Her-story, Festival Africolor at Université Paris 13, in Bobigny and Villetaneuse, Paris, France (2016); and Ke Lefa Laka at Market Photo Workshop, Johannesburg, South Africa (2013). A two-person exhibition Tell Me What You Remember with Kganye and Sue Williamson was recently presented by the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia (2023). Group exhibitions include A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography, at Tate Modern, London, The Struggle of Memory : Part 1 at PalaisPopulaire, Berlin, Germany (both 2023-24), Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection, Chazen Museum of Art, Wisconsin (2023) and The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture at the Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto, Canada (2019). Recent touring group exhibitions include As We Rise, by Aperture, Art Museum, University of Toronto, Polygon Gallery, Vancouver and Peabody Essex Museum, Salem (2022-23), Family Affairs. Family in Current Photography at the House of Photography in Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany and Kunsthalle Erfurt, Germany (2021-23) and The Power of My Hands, at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, France and Museu Nacional de História Natural, Luanda (in 2021-23). Kganye has participated in biennales and triennials around the world including Currency as part of the Triennale of Photography Hamburg at the Hall of Contemporary Art in Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2022); Congo Biennale, Kinshasa (2022); Casablanca Biennale, Casablanca (2022) and the OZANGÉ Spanish Biennial of African Photography, Malaga (2022). In 2022, Kganye was selected as one of three leading contemporary artists to represent South Africa in the 59th Venice Biennale.
Kganye’s work is held in public collections including the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC and the Art Institute of Chicago; Chazen Museum of Art; Wisconsin, Getty Museum; LA, Museum of Fine Arts; Houston, JP Morgan Art Collection; New York, Carnegie Art Museum; Pennsylvania, Victoria and Albert Museum; London, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris, the Centre National des Arts Plastiques; Paris, FRAC Réunion; Réunion, Walther Collection; Ulm and Wedge Collection; Toronto.
CREATIVE DIALOGUE
Lebohang Kganye and Sharlene Khan at The Point of Order, Johannesburg on 9 May 2019.
AUDIO: Art on our Mind Creative Dialogue with Lebohang Kganye
TRANSCRIPT: Art on our Mind Creative Dialogue with Lebohang Kganye
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