Kemang Wa Lehulere: Bird Song

Kemang Wa Lehulere is Deutsche Bank’s new Artist of the Year and in spring of 2017 he will present his first institutional solo exhibition, “Bird Song”, at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle in Berlin.

Living between Johannesburg and Cape Town, Kemang Wa Lehulere is one of the most important representatives of a new generation of South African artists who work in all different kinds of genres and media in order to develop new artistic perspectives and narrative modes, as well as new forms of political action.

He realizes his performances, videos, installations, and chalk drawings, which are based on extensive research, as a solo artist whilst continuing with collaborative work. This includes projects with the exhibition platform and collective Center for Historical Reenactments which was established in 2010. Before that he cofounded and worked with the Cape Town based artist group Gugulective from 2006.

Wa Lehulere’s works often have a focus on black South African history, re-looking and re-imagining the archive of narratives relating to black artists, musicians and authors in an attempt to prevent their work and lives from sinking into oblivion.

After Wangechi Mutu, Yto Barrada, Roman Ondák, Imran Qureshi, Victor Man, Koki Tanaka, and Basim Magdy, Kemang Wa Lehulere is now Deutsche Bank’s 8th international Artist of the Year. The award is given on the recommendation of the Deutsche Bank Global Art Advisory Council which consists of the renowned curators Okwui Enwezor, Hou Hanru, Udo Kittelmann, and Victoria Noorthoorn and goes to a contemporary artist who has created an artistically, as well as socially relevant, oeuvre, one integrating the media of paper and photography – the two main areas of focus of the Deutsche Bank Collection.