Sue Williamson & Lebohang Kganye: Tell Me What You Remember

About the Exhibition

Three decades after the dismantling of apartheid began, South Africa's so-called "born free" generation has reached adulthood and its artists have used their work to navigate their difficult inheritance. At the same time, the historical distance between their experience and that of an older generation grows. Tell Me What You Remember reflects on this moment by bringing together two of South Africa’s most acclaimed contemporary artists.

In their respective practices, Sue Williamson (b. 1941) and Lebohang Kganye (b. 1990) incorporate oral histories into films, photographs, installations, and textiles to consider how the stories our elders tell us shape family narratives and personal identities. Implicitly and explicitly addressing legacies of racial violence and social injustice, their work offers a cross-generational dialogue on history, memory, and the power of self-narration.

The exhibition is curated by Emma Lewis, curator at Turner Contemporary, Margate, England.

About the Artists

Sue Williamson was born in Lichfield, England, in 1941. Her family emigrated to South Africa when she was seven years old. After beginning her career in journalism, Williamson moved to New York in 1964 and worked as a copywriter on Madison Avenue. She also took classes in printmaking and drawing at the Art Students League of New York.

Returning to Cape Town in 1969, where she lives today, Williamson continued her studies in fine art. She would become part of a generation of artists who felt it was their responsibility to use their work in the struggle against apartheid. Her participation in the first meeting of the multiracial Women’s Movement for Peace in 1976 marked the beginning of her activism. It also brought her into contact with many of the people whose stories are told throughout her work.

Since the 1980s, Williamson’s work has spanned printmaking, site-specific sculpture, installation, video, and photography—all in the name of recording histories that would otherwise be overlooked or erased.

Lebohang Kganye was born in Katlehong, South Africa, in 1990. Following an early interest in journalism and literature, studies at Johannesburg’s Market Photo Workshop—founded in 1989 and renowned for its commitment to socially engaged photography—changed the course of her career. After completing the advanced diploma, Kganye went on to study fine arts and is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, where she lives today.

Over the past decade, language and oral tradition have become cornerstones of Kganye’s artistic practice. In 2010, the death of her mother prompted Kganye to travel across South Africa to trace her maternal ancestry. The stories she collected in conversations with her extended family became the source material for her work, an archive that she continues to draw upon today. These stories also revealed how her family history intersects with South Africa’s political and social past.