LEBOHANG KGANYE レボハン・ハンイェ
SOUTH AFRICA IN FOCUS
Presented by DIOR
Curated by Marina Paulenka
For Johannesburg-based artist Lebohang Kganye, storytelling unfolds in a layered practice across words, photography, sculpture, and oral history
Lebohang Kganye came to photography accidentally. She initially persued journalism, but after failing to get into school she enrolled at David Goldblatt's revered Market Photo Workshop, where she found her calling. Her practice now spans photography, animation, installation, and textile art, with a deep engagement with literature as well as theatre and history.
Kganye presents her first major presentation in Japan at KYOTOGRAPHIE 2026, bringing together five significant bodies of work: Keep the Light Faithfully, Mohlokomedi wa Tora, Mosebetsi wa Dirithi, The Sea Is History and Ke Lefa Laka: Her-story. Together, these series examine how personal and historical narratives are formed, fractured and reimagined.
Through cut-out silhouettes, staged photographs, diorama lightboxes, fabric, shadow and sculptural interventions, Kganye composes layered worlds where fragments of personal histories from South Africa overlap with wider political and postcolonial realities. Across these series, she questions ethics and what it means to inherit an incomplete archive: how we fill gaps, how we protect the histories of others and how fiction can sometimes offer a more honest form of truth.
Gladys, 2022 © Lebohang Kganye
Setupung sa kwana hae II, 2013 © Lebohang Kganye
Woman in middle of night, 2022 © Lebohang Kganye
artist アーティスト
Lebohang Kganye レボハン・ハンイェ
Lebohang Kganye (b. 1990, South Africa) layers photography, history, research, theatricality, autobiography and poetics in often sculptural installations. Kganye is currently exhibiting as part of a group show at New York’s MoMA, and has recently exhibited at Fotografiska Berlin, Tate Modern, Foam, LE BAL, and other notable institutions. She has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Deutsche Börse Foundation Prize in 2024, the ICP Infinity Award in 2025, and the Foam Paul Huf Award in 2022. Her work is held in collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Getty Museum, and the Chazen Museum, among others.