Lebohang Kganye

Ke Sale Teng (I'm Still Here), 2017

Information

Location Gallery 2
Artist

Lebohang Kganye

*1990, Johannesburg, South Africa

lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa
Title Ke Sale Teng (I'm Still Here), 2017

Medium Animated film, 3:22 min.
Copyright © Lebohang Kganye. Courtesy of the artist
Exhibition number AW107

MP3    Audio guide

“Ke Sale Teng”, which means I’m still Here, introduces viewers to the string of displacements and temporary accommodations, which the artist‘s family experienced before she was born. During apartheid, Black South Africans were prohibited from owning or renting land in areas that the government had designated ‘white’, which tended to be the most developed and desirable parts of the country. Black South Africans were forcibly removed and had to commute far from their homes to be able to work. Their movements were closely monitored through a pass system.

The central protagonist in this animated film is Kganye’s grandfather, who moved from the Orange Free State Province to the Transvaal to find work. Although Kganye was born in his Johannesburg home, she never knew her grandfather except through oral accounts shared by family members. It is these stories, combined with photographs from her family albums, on which her visual narratives are based. Although rooted in a specific time and place, Kganye’s themes of displacement, migration, and the search for a connection ot the past and place to belong have universal resonance.

"The more I researched my family history, it becomes apparent that family history remains a space of contradictions; it is a mixture of truth and fiction. Sometimes we rely on the family photo album as a way to understand what family is meant to be. 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 with that album. Such archives do not reveal easy answers, for me they reveal that time can break apart and reconnect and not quite fit back into one another." - Quote Lebohang Kganye

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