Association of Arts Pretoria
173 Mackie Street
Nieuw Mucleneuk
Pretoria, South Africa
Pretoria Art Museum
Cnr Francis Baard and Wessels Str,
Arcadia Park,Arcadia,
Pretoria, South Afric
Tel: 012 358 6750
Ke sale teng
Animated film
202 seconds
Ke sale teng confronts how family photo albums no longer have a fixed narrative, but instead, opens us to reinterpret our past. Perhaps this kind of reinterpretation is an interrogation of our need to preserve a certain narrative. Photo albums are arranged as if to tell life stories and testimonies and build identities, however, the image is never ‘complete’ – we are only presented with visual clues that allow our own imagination to further ‘complete’ the story.
The more I research my family history, it becomes apparent that family history remains a space of contradictions – it is a mixture of truth and fiction. Sometimes we rely on the family photo album as a way to understand what family is meant to be. What we often land up with is a grouping of images that have been constructed, and perhaps do not account at all for the histories and memories that are connected with that album.
Through the use of silhouette cut-outs of family members and other props in a diorama, the film confronts the conflicting stories which are told in multiple ways - memory combined with fantasy. Such archives do not reveal easy answers, for me, they reveal that time can break apart and reconnect and not quite fit back into one another.
Lebohang Kganye is an artist living and working in Johannesburg. Kganye received her introduction to photography at the Market Photo Workshop in 2009 and completed the Advanced Photography Programme in 2011. She also completed her Fine Arts studies at the University of Johannesburg in 2016 and forms a new generation of contemporary South African photographers.
Although primarily a photographer, Kganye’s photography often incorporates her interest in sculpture and performance. Over the past six years, she has participated in photography master classes and group exhibitions locally and internationally. Kganye was the recipient of the Tierney Fellowship Award in 2012, leading to her exhibition Ke Lefa Laka. She created an animation from the series, which was launched on Mandela Day 2014 in Scotland, entitled Pied Piper’s Voyage. Kganye was then selected as the Featured Artist for the 17th Business and Arts South Africa Awards in 2014.
She was also awarded the Jury Prize at the Bamako Encounters Biennale of African Photography in 2015. Kganye’s work forms part of several private and public collections, most notably the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pennsylvania and the Walther Collection in Ulm.