WHAT ARE YOU LEAVING BEHIND?
AN EXHIBITION BY LEBOHANG KGANYE
22 FEBRUARY - 9 APRIL 2022
Kganye's work is centered around personal and familial history. Her series Ke Lefa Laka: Her-story stems from confronting grief from the loss of her mother, while maintaining a connection to her and generational history. The title translates to “it’s my legacy” in seSotho. Kganye explains, “That work just came on its own, somehow it gave birth to itself through me."
Lebohang Kganye was born in 1990 in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she currently lives and works. Kganye received her introduction to photography at the Market Photo Workshop, in Johannesburg, in 2009 and completed the Advanced Photography Programme in 2011. She obtained a Diploma in Fine Arts from the University of Johannesburg in 2014 and is currently doing her Masters 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 the finalist of the Rolex Mentor & Protégé Arts Initiative, 2019.
Kganye is participating in major museum group exhibitions in 2021, Family Affairs. Family in Current Photography at the House of Photography in Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany and The Power of My Hands, at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, France. She has exhibited her work extensively within curated group exhibitions and biennales including: Afterglow, Yokohama Triennale, Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan, in 2020; Africa State of Mind, a travelling exhibition presented at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK, in 2019–2020, theMuseum of African Diaspora, San Francisco, USA, in 2019 and the Impressions Gallery, Bradford, UK, in 2018; The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture at the Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto, Canada, in 2019; Recent Histories, a touring exhibition of Contemporary African Photography and Video Art from Arthur Walther Collection, presented at Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, Amsterdam, in 2018–2019; Tell freedom, by all means necessary, at Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort, Netherlands, in 2018; Give me Yesterday, Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy, in 2016 and Telling Time, at the Bamako Encounters Biennale of African Photography, Bamako, Mali, in 2015.