Kwazokuhle Phakathi
Kwazokuhle Phakathi (b. 1998) is a South African interdisciplinary artist, based in Johannesburg South Africa. They work mainly in the mediums of photography, text and performance - exploring ideas of identity, belonging and space. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions such as Post Card Africa (Lagos Photo Festival, 2022) and Notions of Home, Identity and Belonging at Javett-UP in 2023. He has completed a Foundation Course (2021, Market Photo Workshop) and a Mid Level Course (2022, Through The Lens Collective). He is completed his Advanced Course in Photography (2023) at the Through The Lens Collective.
Events scatter around the continent, one as troubling and urgent as the next. Transmitted as segments across screens, we receive a warped perspective of foreign realities, as we grapple with our own volatile present. I question the cause of the separation and instability in
Africa. To connect with the continent beyond my birth country - I turned to the television, as a way to traverse the continent through media.
By photographing historic and contemporary broadcasts, I attempt to construct a dialogue between our collective past and unresolved present. Using a digital process I developed, photographs are distorted and faces are removed - to reflect the identity erasure and
displacement that occurs in times of war, corruption and forced migrations.
In Africa, almost everything has happened. A continent that cannot separate itself from its colonial history (and present). A place that continues to wrestle with the too familiar sense of uncertainty, looming in the distance. Here, where men are made into martyrs for pseudo
freedom agendas, and women are easily forgotten - removed of legacy and legend.
However, Africans continue to forge a life in the midst of the chaos, in the midst of the darkness, in the midst of the political and religious indoctrination. Life continues, sometimes only as a memory.
https://photoworks.org.uk/kwazokuhle-phakathi-almost-everything-has-happened/
