Lebohang Kganye

Kganye, who is best known for her photographic work, often combines the archival and the performative with a practice that focuses on storytelling and memory as it plays out in the familial experience. Her ongoing interest in the materiality of photography is variously explored through the use of sculpture, performance and moving images. While reflecting a particular South African experience, she also critically examines oral traditions and memory as an unreliable repository.

The starting point for Lebohang Kganye's project is a collection of images by the German painter and photographer Marie Pauline Thorbecke, which are kept in the archives of the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum. Thorbecke undertook an expedition to Cameroon with her husband Franz from 1911-1913 on behalf of the German Colonial Society. Some 110 years later, Kganye is travelling through the country again on these tracks and weaving memories, impressions and narratives from a female perspective into a video work and a spatial installation.