Lebohang Kganye

TELL ME WHAT YOU REMEMBER:
SUE WILLIAMSON AND LEBOHANG KGANYE

This book brings together two of South Africa’s most acclaimed contemporary artists to reflect upon this moment. In their respective practices, Sue Williamson (b. 1941) and Lebohang Kganye (b. 1990) incorporate oral histories into film, photographs, installations, and textiles to consider how, just as formal statements determine collective histories, so the stories our elders tell us shape family narratives and personal identities. Exploring the complexities involved in the passing down of memories, their works implicitly and explicitly address racial violence, social injustice, and intergenerational trauma. This richly illustrated catalogue features essays that consider themes of voice, testimony, ancestry, and care, and a dialogue between Kganye and Williamson that explores how art can mobilize the healing powers of conversation.

Hardcover, 152 Pages, 18.5 x 24.5 cm, 100 color illus.
Edited by exhibition curator Emma Lewis.
Published by Barnes Foundation
Distributed by Yales Univercity Press

LOOK INSIDE

LEBOHANG KGANYE
One Picture Book II #26 : Ke Lefa Laka: Her-story Volume I
One Picture Book II #27 : Ke Lefa Laka: Her-story Volume II

Lebohang Kganye’s highly acclaimed work Ke Lefa Laka: Her-story (2013) presented as a publication of two volumes in the One Picture Book II series.

“In my attempt to make sense of my loss and as a post-grief, after my mother passed away, I started looking for pieces of her in her house. I found many of her photographs and clothes, which have always been there, but which I had ignored over the years. Photographs present us, therefore, not just with the “thereness” of the object but its “having-been-there”, thus having the ability to present a past, a present and future in a single image (Barthes, 1980, p.77). Like Barthes looking at the photo of his mother, we look at the person and see the trajectory of their life. The fact that no matter how alive they look, the photograph points to all of our mortalities. The essence of my mother that I identify in these photographs is, in fact, my essence, my constructions, my memories and fantasies of this person whom I met in only one capacity: namely, mother.” — Lebohang Kganye

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.”

Hardcover, 15.2 x 21.5 cm, 16 pages, 15 color plates,
Each Volume is limited to 500 numbered copies, including a 12.5 x 17.5 cm original print that has been signed by the artist.
Published by Nazraeli Press

PASS IT ON
Exhibition in printed matter.

Pass It On. Private Stories, Public Histories is a follow up to the exhibition of the same name, at FOTODOK (2020/21). Since the show happened during a lockdown, to open it up to the audience FOTODOK created a virtual tour where visitors can immerse themselves in the digital space. A platform to provide a much-needed personal and tactile experience of the works was also created… In other words— the exhibition was translated into printed matter.

Pass It On presents five photographic projects that address family archives. ‘A Garden Revisioned’ by Inge Meijer’s Lebohang Kganye’s ‘Ho thubeha ha lebone’ (A breakage of the light) is rooted in the artist’s research of her own family’s pictures and history in apartheid South Africa. ‘Operation Detachment’ by Marianne Ingleby, ‘It Doesn’t Stop at Images’ by Pablo Lerma and ‘When Summer Became Winter’ by Yara Jimmink.

Special binding, 24 x 33 cm
Curator & Editor: Daria Tuminas
Co-published by PHOTODOK & METEØRØ EDITIONS

Read the article on Lensculture