Artists

Working in a variety of media that includes sculpture, installation, drawing and performance, Cape Town based artist Kemang Wa Lehulere uses found objects and salvaged materials to create environments and events that situate personal memories within, and in contrast to, collective narratives. Using conceptually loaded materials such as school desks, tyres, chalkboards and ornamental ceramic dogs, he poeticises the ‘double lives’ of objects to tease out their ambivalent or subversive meanings through reconfiguration and assemblage. Currently represented
by blank projects, Wa Lehulere has seen international success with solo exhibitions at Göteborg Konsthall, Sweden; Manchester International Festival, the Tate Modern, and Gasworks UK; Pasquart Art Centre, Switzerland; MAXXI, Italy; the Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle, Germany; and the Art Institute of Chicago, USA. Wa Lehulere was the winner of the inaugural Spier Contemporary Award in 2007, the MTN New Contemporaries Award in 2010, and the Tollman Award for the Visual Arts in 2012; he was one of two young artists awarded the 15th Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel in 2013, won the first International Tiberius Art Award Dresden in 2014 and was the Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Arts in 2015.