'Haufi nyana? I’ve come to take you home' presents the work of Lebohang Kganye, winner of the Foam Paul Huf Award 2022. The exhibition showcases four projects from Kganye's oeuvre, spanning the last decade. From photographic montages to spatial installations, film animation and patchwork: together these artworks emphasise the resourceful and complex visual language of the Johannesburg-based artist.
The work of Lebohang Kganye is focused on exploring her family history, contextualised by the wider history of South Africa from before, during, and in the aftermath of apartheid and colonialism. Her projects are informed by oral narratives, family archives, images sourced from vernacular albums, but also by her clan’s names. Kganye collects her relatives’ tales along with plots from South African literature, which she translates into theatrical scripts and settings, silhouettes and other imagery that give expression to all these personal and collective histories. Lebohang Kganye is interested in the area between memory and fantasy. She uses words and images as constructs to bridge the gaps in (collective) memory in order to decolonize the medium of photography and South Africa's cultural heritage.
‘Haufi nyana?’ means ‘Too close?’ in Sesotho, one of the eleven official languages of South Africa. The title of the exhibition refers to the interplay between viewer and artist: how deep can one enter somebody else’s autobiography? And how much can one share while telling their personal story? The title also refers to a broader notion of 'home': as a heritage, an identity, and people dear to you. Home is not just a physical, but also a mental space — which can be far, close, or too close… perhaps, simultaneously.
About the artist
Lebohang Kganye (1990, Johannesburg, SA) 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 2016 and is currently doing her masters in Fine Arts at the Witwatersrand University. Apart from the Foam Paul Huf Award 2022, other notable recent awards include the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2021/22, Paulo Cunha e Silva Art Prize 2020 and the Camera Austria Award of 2019. Over the past eight years she has exhibited her work extensively within curated group exhibitions and biennales. Most recent examples include Into the Light at the South African Pavilion of the 59th Venice Biennale (IT) and the touring group exhibition As We Rise by Aperture (US), amongst many other presentations of her work.
About the award
The Foam Paul Huf Award is an internationally acclaimed photography prize aiming to support generational talents and provide a platform for photographers from across the world. This prize has been organised by Foam every year since 2007 and is awarded to photographers by an international independent professional jury, which for this edition comprised of Alona Pardo (chair, curator at Barbican Art Gallery, London), Oscar Muñoz (visual artist and founder of Lugar a Dudas, Colombia), Oluremi Onabanjo (associate curator at MoMA, New York), Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger (artistic director at Finnish Museum of Photography) and Demet Yıldız Dinçer (photography department manager at Istanbul Modern, Turkey). The Foam Paul Huf Award consists of a cash prize and a solo exhibition at Foam.
The Foam Paul Huf Award was made possible by the generous support of Mentha Capital.
Foam especially thanks the Foam Friends Foundation and Foam Fund for their contribution to this exhibition.
Foam is supported by the VriendenLoterij, Foam Members, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, the VandenEnde Foundation and Gemeente Amsterdam.
Installation views © Christian van der Kooy
Opening documentation © Almicheal Fraay
