“I have oftentimes said that the future belongs to Africa, because it seems to have happened everywhere else already,” curator Okwui Enwezor stated in 2015, in one of many interviews on a subject he knows well. With such sentiment in mind, ARTnews looks to ten African artists whose work resonates right now. Their art ranges from films and sound installations to photographs and digital works. Some are interested in mining complex histories while others imagine new futures for the African continent—and the entire world.
Lebohang Kganye
Born in 1990, Katlehong, South Africa; based in Johannesburg, South Africa
Lebohang Kganye embarked on “Ke Lefa Laka,” a multipart photo project, when her mother died. (The title translates from Sotho as “My Inheritance.”) In one part of the series, the artist superimposed her own image on top of her mother’s, creating what seem to be specters haunting the present from the past. Kganye said she hoped to summon her mother in a manner in which “she is me, I am her, and there remains in this commonality so much difference.”
Kganye attributed “Ke Lefa Laka” partly to the fallout of apartheid—how her family had to settle and resettle over the years—and also how images can be manipulated to tell new stories. Other of her photographs and films have combined personal stories with political events in South Africa. Her most recent work involves animations in which cutout versions of old photos move around. In one, a woman irons fabric while a train chugs past. With the woman’s face removed, viewers are left to fill in the details. “A family identity,” Kganye said, “becomes an orchestrated fiction and a collective invention.”