Family Shadows and Memory Maps in Lebohang Kganye’s South Africa

Lebohang Kganye’s art transforms family albums into haunting, life-sized silhouettes, inviting viewers to step into the blurred boundaries of memory and migration. Her award-winning installation, shown at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, weaves together photography, sculpture, and performance to trace the echoes of forced journeys under apartheid in South Africa. Rather than simply documenting the past, Kganye’s figures—cut from old family photos—stand as silent witnesses to histories of displacement and resilience. The exhibition’s title, “Haufi nyana?”—Sesotho for “too close”—captures the tension between longing for home and the realities of exile. Through her work, Kganye reframes personal loss as a shared cultural memory, turning absence into presence and private stories into public art. In her hands, the family album becomes a stage for reckoning with identity, belonging, and the shadows history leaves behind. #ContemporaryPhotography #SouthAfricanArt #CulturalMemory #Culture