ERDMANN Contemporary is proud to present this two person exhibition in association with North-West University Gallery in Potchefstroom.

Lindeka Qampi is a self-taught photographer who has specialized in the genre of Street Photography. Photography became her career in 2006, after joining a consortium of photographers known as Iilso Labantu (the eye of the people). For the past decade she has focused her lens on daily township life, with particular attention on Khayelitsha, the township in which she has lived since her teens. She captures and shares what she sees, from the private sphere to the euphoria of child play. Her photographs express the poetry and politics of the ‘ordinary act’ and therein the potential of imagining new possibilities for the future.

In 2011 Qampi developed a series of photographs for New York University Masters student, Shady Patterson which featured township fashions. Patterson project, “Clothing and Dress in South African Townships in the Post Apartheid Era” attempted to ‘explore and interrogate the sartorial landscape of impoverished communities to reveal traditional influences in economically oppressed and media saturated societies’.  Qampi completed the assignment, but felt her work was not done, she released Material Culture at the end of 2011.

From 2012 and alongside developing her own career as a practicing photographer Qampi has been the project facilitator for Inkanyiso, an activist platform founded by fellow photographer, Zanele Muholi. One of their projects, Empathetic Eyes took them to Benin where they presented photography workshops which focused on violence against woman. In 2015 this group of visual activists accepted an invitation to Norway and participated in a Visual Activism Cultural Exchange Project. In 2016 Muholi and Qampi were acknowledged for their outreach work with a Brave Award.

In 2015 Qampi decided it was time to turn her lens onto herself and her immediate family after she had penned a poem to her late mother. “I have never written a poem before, but I knew I needed to say these words”. Qampi also proceeded with the idea to illustrate each word of the poem with a photograph, either with an image of herself or her children. “I wanted my photographs to act as the grammar of my expression”. As the series developed, and much through an exploration of self-portraiture, Qampi decided it was time to also investigate other modes of expression. Inside My Heart now includes a video work, drawings and objects made by the artist.

In the final act Qampi developed her singing voice and has written the lyrics and music for songs which she performs when presenting this particular series of work.

She lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.

Nomusa Makhubu explores issues of identity and particularly the sensitive issue of representation/self-representation through the medium of photography. Her acclaimed series, Self-Portrait Project alludes to the continued alienation and estrangement in an era where the focus is inclined toward self and individual identity as opposed to collective and communal life. One of the canonical meanings that Achille Mbembe (2002: 241) argues can be attributed to slavery and colonialism (as well as Apartheid) is dispossession, a process in which juridical and economic procedures have led to material expropriation.

Her 2013 series, The Flood received deserved critical acclaim. It marks a departure in her work, shifting from the personal to the public, from the performative to documenting. In 2015 she returned to an earlier practice of weaving two photographs into a unique work. Makhubu won her first award in 2006 with an entry of woven photographs. In the current series, In Living Colour she brings two geographical locations in one pictorial space to question the assumed universality and objectivity of time and place.

She lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.

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Opening Friday 21 April at 19:00

Opening Speaker & Performance: Lindeka Qampi

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www.erdmanncontemporary.co.za