ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how performance, materiality, and the family album have been activated in contemporary South African art, with specific reference to the work of Lebohang Kganye. Kganye's photographs draw on her family stories and her mother's photograph albums. Her work “Ke lefa laka” is comprised of two parts: digitally manipulated photographs of the artist and her mother, called Her Story, and photographs that include life-size cut-outs of photos enlarged from family albums, called Heir Story. These photographs collate images from different periods in South Africa's history to tell Kganye's family stories through performance, with an emphasis on materiality. This connects them to the broad context of history, politics, and economics through stories of resettlement and migrancy and issues around identity and representation.
