Lebohang Kganye: Sasol New Signatures Winner 2017

WORDS Mary Garner

Twenty-seven-year-old Johannesburg-based filmmaker, photographer and artist Lebohang Kganye has been named the winner of the 2017 Sasol New Signatures Art Competition.

She created animated film Ke sale teng (‘I’m still here’ in Sesotho) that portrays how the narrative of family portraits has changed. It challenges the desire to hold onto a particular narrative and opens you up to reinterpreting your past.

“Sometimes we rely on the family photo album as a way to understand what family is meant to be,” she says. “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 to that album.”

Making use of props and silhouette cutouts of family members in a diorama, Lebohang explores the reality of conflicting stories, told in varying ways, even by the same individual.

She has received a cash prize of R100 000 and will have a solo exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum next year.

The runner-up, with his work Umbango, is artist Sthenjwa Hopewell Luthuli. The five Merit Award winners are Francke Gretchen Crots (Johannesburg), Goitseone Botlhale Moerane (Pretoria), Carol Anne Preston (Pretoria), Emily Harriet Bülbring Robertson (Cape Town), Cara-Jo Tredoux (Pretoria).

For more information, visit sasolsignatures.co.za.