Present Objects is a group exhibition that brings together contemporary artists exploring the use of paper-based work in diverse ways. Co-curated with Emily Lambert-Clements and Monique Deschaines, the exhibition includes works from artists Clare Strand, Lebohang Kganye, Liza Ambrossio, Rachel Phillips and Julia Goodman.

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The six photographs from South African artist Lebohang Kganye’s series Tell Tale (2018) are made using miniature theatre sets with silhouette cutouts of characters and settings in a diorama that is then photographed. The stories and characters explored by the artist come from a trip she took to the town of Nieu Bethesda in the Karoo, Eastern Cape of South Africa. Speaking with villagers, Kganye weaves their oral stories, both fiction and fantasy, into retellings as physical objects. Notable local figures play a prominent role in the local history and in Kganye’s reinterpretations. Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard, a South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director, is best known for his political plays and movies opposing the system of apartheid. Kganye uses his writing as a thread throughout the project. Tell Tale confronts the conflicting stories, which are told in multiple ways, even by the same person. The work does not attest to being a documentation of a people but presents their personal narratives, often a mixture of memory and myth.