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Lebohang Kganye
South Africa
B. 1990
Lebohang Kganye (b. 1990, Johannesburg, South Africa) lives and works in Johannesburg, and forms a new generation of contemporary South African photographers. Primarily known for her photography, Kganye often incorporates the archival and performative into a practice that centres storytelling and memory as it plays itself out in the familial experience. Her interest in the materiality of photography is ongoing and explored in a myriad of ways, through her use of the sculptural, performative and moving image. While her work may resonate with a particularly South African experience; it critically engages with oral tradition as form and memory as a tangible source material.
Kganye is currently completing her Master in Fine Arts at the Witwatersrand University; she studied Fine Arts at the University of Johannesburg (2016); and Photography at the Market Photo Workshop (2011).
She is the recipient of the Deutsche Börse Foundation Prize, 2024 for her exhibition Haufi Nyana? I’ve Come to Take You Home, which took place at Foam, Amsterdam (2023). Other notable recent awards include the Foam Paul Huf Award, 2022, Grand Prix Images Vevey, 2021/22; and Camera Austria Award, 2019.
Kganye’s recent solo exhibitions with newly commissioned work include Shall You Return Everything, but the Burden, Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, Cologne, Germany (2023) and Dipina tsa Kganya: Leave the Light on When You Leave for Good, Georgian House Museum, Bristol, UK (2022). A two-person exhibition Tell Me What You Remember with Kganye and Sue Williamson was recently presented by the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia (2023).
Recent touring group exhibitions include David Goldblatt: No Ulterior Motive, Art Institute of Chicago and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven and Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid (2024-25); Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, Photographers’ Gallery, London and The Cube, Frankfurt (2024); A World in Common, Tate Museum, London and Wereld Museum, Rotterdam (2023-24); and As We Rise, by Aperture, Art Museum, University of Toronto, Polygon Gallery, Vancouver, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem and Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax (2022-24).
In 2022, Kganye was one of three artists exhibited in Into the Light, the South African Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale. She has participated in biennales and triennials around the world including RAY ECHOES as part of the Triennial of Photography, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, Frankfurt, Germany (2024); Currency as part of the Triennale of Photography Hamburg at the Hall of Contemporary Art in Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2022); Afterglow, Yokohama Triennale, Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan (2020).
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; Centre National des Arts Plastiques, Paris; Fondation Francès, Senlis; FRAC Réunion, Réunion; Verbund Collection, Vienna; Walther Collection, Ulm amongst others.