Artist Talk: Lebohang Kganye
In Conversation with Marina Paulenka
Image credit: © Lebohang Kganye, Draped in Shadow
Join us for an evening with Lebohang Kganye in conversation with Marina Paulenka, curator of the exhibition and Director of Exhibitions at Fotografiska Berlin, as they explore Kganye’s evocative show Le Sale ka Kgotso, which opens at Fotografiska Berlin the same day.
Working across photography, sculpture, and installation, Kganye draws from oral tradition, personal memory, and myth to examine ideas of home, identity, and South Africa’s complex social history.
The exhibition invites visitors into a life-sized, walkable structure modeled after a “Reconstruction and Development Programme” (RDP) house – a South African socio-economic housing program implemented by the government of President Nelson Mandela post-apartheid in 1994 – transformed here into a spectral framework that is at once solid and fragile, filled with ruptures rather than resolution.
Artist: Lebohang Kganye
Lebohang Kganye (b. 1990, South Africa) works across photography, video, and mixed media to weave historiography, autobiography, and poetics into sculptural installations. Winner of the 2024 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, Kganye is featured in MoMA’s New Photography 2025. She has exhibited at Foam, Tate, the Barnes Foundation, and the 2022 Venice Biennale. Her work is held in major collections including the Smithsonian, Getty, V&A, and Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris.
Moderator: Marina Paulenka (Curator of the exhibition)
Marina Paulenka is Director of Exhibitions at Fotografiska Berlin, a role she has held for the past three and a half years. With over 17 years of experience in curating, artistic direction, and cultural leadership, she is the founder and former Artistic Director of the Organ Vida International Photography Festival in Zagreb, a leading platform for contemporary photography in the Balkans. She has held prominent curatorial positions at UNSEEN in Amsterdam, the Bristol Photo Festival, FUTURES Photography, and FORMAT21. Born in Croatia, she holds two MA degrees from the University of Zagreb and maintains her own artistic practice alongside her curatorial work.