Kemang Wa Lehulere

Kemang Wa Lehulere creates work that delves into the history of his home country, South Africa, blending personal histories with historical events. He crafts haunting visual narratives that undergo continuous revision and reconstruction.

Biography of Kemang Wa Lehulere

Kemang Wa Lehulere was born in 1984 in Cape Town, South Africa. In 2004, he received a Diploma in Visual Arts from the Community Arts Project/Arts and Media Access Centre in Cape Town. In 2011, the artist obtained a BA in Fine Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

Wa Lehulere co-founded Gugulective, an artist-led collective in Cape Town, in 2006, and was also a founding member of the Center for Historical Reenactments in Johannesburg in 2010.

He won the Spier Contemporary Award in 2007 and the MTN New Contemporaries Award in 2010. In 2012, he received the Tollman Award for the Visual Arts and was one of two young artists honored with the 15th Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel in 2013. He continued his streak of accolades by winning the first International Tiberius Art Award in Dresden in 2014.

In 2017, Wa Lehulere was recognized as Deutsche Bank's "Artist of the Year." That same year, he received the fourth Malcolm McLaren Award and was a finalist in the Future Generation Art Prize in Kyiv, Ukraine.

His solo exhibitions include "To Every Earth its Blood" at Galerie Tschudi in Zurich (2023), "Bring Back Lost Love" at Blank Project in Cape Town (2023), "Bring Back Lost Love" at Göteborg Konsthall in Göteborg (2021), "Where Did the Sky Go" at Galerie Tschudi in Zuoz (2020), "I cut my skin to liberate the splinter" at Tate Modern in London (2019), and many more.

Additionally, Wa Lehulere's works have been featured in numerous group shows held at various galleries and museums worldwide, including Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur, Heide Museum of Modern Art in Bulleen, Wits Art Museum in Johannesburg, Es Baluard in Palma, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Stevenson in Johannesburg, among others.

The artist has participated in the 14th Kaunas Biennial (2023), the Manchester International Festival (2021), the 58th Venice Biennale (2019), 14th Sharjah Biennale (2019), 11th Mercosul Biennal (2018), and the 15th Istanbul Biennial (2017).

Kemang Wa Lehulere's Art Style

Kemang Wa Lehulere works across various media, including sculpture, installation, drawing, and performance. He employs found objects and salvaged materials to craft environments and events that juxtapose personal memories with collective narratives. By using conceptually charged items like school desks, tyres, chalkboards, and ceramic dogs, he explores the 'double lives' of objects—revealing their potential for multiple interpretations. Through reconfiguration and assemblage, Wa Lehulere poeticizes these objects, uncovering their ambiguous or subversive meanings.