Lebohang Kganye has won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2024 with her exhibition entitled, Haufi nyana? I've come to take you home.
The South African-born photographer was awarded the $38,000 (£30,000) prestigious prize on Thursday at a ceremony at The Photographers Gallery in London, England.
The other finalists were Gauri Gill and Rajesh Vangad, Hrair Sarkissian and Valie Export, who all received $6,350 (£5,000) each.
The winning exhibition’s title is in Sesotho, one of the eleven official languages in South Africa, and the blending of images and words enable Kganye to explore the complex history of South Africa in a new light, "contributing to the process of decolonization," says the Gallery.
The annual award is in its 27th year, and recognizes bodies of work that have contributed to the world of photography over the past 12 months.
"The 2024 shortlisted projects all critically engage with urgent concerns, from the remnants of war and conflict, experiences of diasporic communities and decolonization, to contested land, heritage, equality and gender," says the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation.
"Together these artists demonstrate photography's unique capacity to reveal what is invisible, forgotten or marginalized and imagine a path to redress."
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ABOVE: Watch the trailer for the exhibition.
Born in 1990, the year apartheid ended, in Johannesburg, Kganye uses silhouettes and life-size cutout figures of her family in her large installations, taken from images found in photo albums.
Her work covers the experience of her family’s forced migration due to land acts and apartheid law. She also draws on collective as well as personal history, drawing from oral narratives and fictional texts, exploring South Africa’s multifaceted history before, during and after the apartheid and colonialism.
The exhibition features four projects that employ a complex array of media, from photographic montages in Ke Lefa Laka: Her-Story ("It’s my inheritance: Her-Story", 2013) to spatial installation in Mohlokomediwa Tora ("Lighthouse Keeper", 2018) and film animation in Shadows of ReMemory (2021) to patchwork in Mosebetsi wa Dirithi ("The Work of Shadows", 2022).
"In her vast, experimental installations, Kganye creates a space that resides between memory and fantasy," comments the Foundation.
"Here she collects stories from her family with excerpts from South African literature, and rewrites them into theatrical scripts. Silhouettes, cutouts, puppets, shadows and ghosts, fashioned from material found in photo albums as well as her own compositions, (re-)enact these scripts and bring them to life."
Her work is on display at The Photographers' Gallery, external alongside the other shortlisted artists - Valie Export, Gauri Gill & Rajesh Vangad and Hrair Sarkissian - until June 2, 2024.
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