| | | | | | | | | Summer, 2018 © Sem Langendijk. | | | | | | | 10 March – 18 June 2023 | | | | | | Haufi nyana? I’ve come to take you home | | | | 17 February – 21 May 2023 | | | | | | | ... until 14 June 2023 | | | | | | Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam Keizersgracht 609 . 1017 DS Amsterdam
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Mon-Wed 10am-6pm; Thu-Fri 10am-9pm; Sat-Sun 10am-6pm | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Dog, 2018 © Sem Langendijk. | | | | | | | 10 March – 18 June 2023 | | | | | | Sem Langendijk's first solo exhibition, Haven, shows the result of a long-term photographic investigation into the process and effects of gentrification and the social inequality it generates. While living and working space is created for some, others are constantly forced to make room. Foam shows Haven at a time when many city dwellers are looking for affordable housing and when many Amsterdam residents can no longer afford to live in the neighbourhood they once grew up in. | | | | | | | | | | New York Grain Terminal, 2016 © Sem Langendijk. | | | | | | Who owns the city? In his research project Haven, Sem Langendijk attempts to capture the environment of his youth: a place that no longer exists. While growing up in a community of labourers, artists, squatters and outsiders in the western harbours of Amsterdam, Langendijk saw the city slowly but surely change its course. The city’s fringe was transformed into a smoothed-out quay with a new skyline, luxury apartments and large-scale architecture. Haven examines the environments of different port cities in various phases of transition, highlighting the transformation of disused docklands and the communities that reside there — showing not only a process of urban development but alyo of social exclusion.
Once fallen into disuse, port areas are the type of sanctuary for creatives who, with limited resources, shape their living environment in idiosyncratic ways. Uplifting these post-industrial environments into creative hubs, it’s just a matter of time before they have to make way for new construction projects in which there is no longer room for them. With an air of nostalgia, Sem Langendijk quietly observes the process of transformation through his lens. Piecing together the mundane as silent signifiers of gentrification, his criticism lies not in the natural cycle of how cities develop, but in the loss of character and history in the current trend of large-scale re-development projects. Having photographed in Amsterdam’s ADM, the Docklands of London and Red Hook in New York, at times it’s hard to distinguish one place from another in the homogenous and anonymous architecture of glass, metal and concrete that replaces the cultural imprint these places once had. | | | | | | | | | | Tommy, 2018 © Sem Langendijk | | | | | | Sem Langendijk (1990, NL) grew up in Amsterdam's Westerdok and still lives and works in Amsterdam. He began his photographic research on the re-development of former port areas as a graduation project at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague in 2015, and in the following years, he released the three-part publication The Docklands Project, focusing on the gentrification and privatization of docklands in Amsterdam, London and New York. He brought the material from this long-term research together in 2022 in his publication Haven (The Eriskay Connection), in which the different cities merge into a penetrating documentary reflection on the process and effects of gentrification.
In his documentary photography practice, he focuses primarily on portraying places and communities, exploring what connects people to their surroundings and what gives a place meaning and character. He works primarily analogue with slow, technical cameras, typical of the contemplative observation of the environment in which Langendijk finds himself. | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | "Mohlokomedi wa Tora", Scene 2, 2018 (detail) © Lebohang Kganye. | | | | | | Haufi nyana? I’ve come to take you home | | | | 17 February – 21 May 2023 | | | | Opening: Thursday 16 February 18:30 | | | | In 2022, Lebohang Kganye won the 16th edition of the Foam Paul Huf Award. Subsequently, Foam is now proud to announce her solo exhibition Haufi nyana? I've come to take you home. Although her work has been featured in many group shows all over the world, this is her first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. | | | | | | | | | | "Shadows of Re-Memory", Film Still 1, 2021 © Lebohang Kganye. | | | | | | The artistic practice of Lebohang Kganye, who lives and works in Johannesburg, is focused on exploring the personal and collective ‘micro histories’ of her family. It is embedded in the wider history of South Africa from before, during, and in the aftermath of apartheid and colonialism. Her work is largely informed by oral narratives and texts — she collects stories about the impact of apartheid on her family along with plots from South African literature. Words are translated into a ‘play’ or theatrical scripts, and images, sourced from vernacular albums or produced by the artist, are turned into settings, silhouettes, cut-outs, puppets, shadows or even ghosts that fill the imaginative space between words. Kganye is interested in the dynamics between memory and fantasy that photography and storytelling jointly create. The constructed nature of both images and words allows her to bridge gaps in (collective) memory. Effortlessly moving within the sphere of possibilities, Kganye develops methods of decolonizing the medium of photography and South African cultural heritage.
‘Haufi nyana?’ means ‘Too close?’ in Sesotho, one of the eleven official languages of South Africa. The exhibition title refers to the nature of the dialogue between a viewer and the artist: how far can one enter a photographic autobiography on the one hand, and how much can one share a personal story on the other? It also refers to the idea of ‘home’ — which can be far, close, or too close… perhaps even simultaneously. Haufi nyana? I’ve come to take you home showcases four projects from the artist’s oeuvre, spanning the last decade. Each emphasises the complex visual vocabulary of the artist, and the diversity of media and approaches she engages with — from photographic montages (Ke Lefa Laka: Her-Story, 2013) to spatial installation (Mohlokomedi wa Tora, 2018), and from film animation (Shadows of Re-Memory, 2021) to patchwork (Mosebetsi wa Dirithi, 2022). | | | | | | | | | | "Shadows of Re-Memory", Film Still 1, 2021 © Lebohang Kganye. | | | | | | Lebohang Kganye (1990, Johannesburg, SA) received her introduction to photography at the Market Photo Workshop, in Johannesburg, in 2009 and completed the Advanced Photography Programme in 2011. She obtained a diploma in fine arts from the University of Johannesburg in 2014 and is currently doing her masters in fine arts at Witwatersrand University. Apart from the Foam Paul Huf Award 2022, other notable recent awards include the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2021/22, Paulo Cunha e Silva Art Prize 2020 and the Camera Austria Award of 2019.
Over the past eight years, she has exhibited her work extensively within curated group exhibitions and biennales. Most recent examples include Into the Light, South African Pavilion, 59th Venice Biennale, Venice, and the touring group exhibition As We Rise, by Aperture, amongst many other presentations of her work. Kganye’s work forms part of several private and public collections, among which the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, the Art Institute of Chicago Collection, the Getty Museum in LA, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the JP Morgan Art Collection in New York, the Carnegie Art Museum in Pennsylvania, and the Walther Collection in Ulm. | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | South Africa, 1960s © Ernest Cole / Magnum Photos | | | | | | | ... until 14 June 2023 | | | | Foam proudly presents the first overview of the work of South African photographer Ernest Cole. The exhibition includes parts of his archive, which had long been considered lost. The overview was assembled in collaboration with the Ernest Cole Family Trust, which in 2017 secured control of Cole’s archive. Cole is celebrated for his tireless documentation of Black lives in South Africa under apartheid: a regime of institutionalised racial segregation that was in effect from 1948 to the early 1990s. | | | | | | | | | | South Africa, 1960s © Ernest Cole / Magnum Photos | | | | | | As one of the first Black freelance photographers, Cole offered with his work an unprecedented view from the inside. Born in a township, Cole experienced the strains of apartheid first-hand. By having himself reclassified from ‘black’ to ‘coloured’, he managed to access places where most South Africans were banned. He risked his life exposing the grim reality of racial segregation, by documenting miners inside the mines, police controls and the demolition of townships, among others.
Cole lived a nomadic life, exiled from his native South Africa for his photographic publication House of Bondage (1967). The chapters from this book form the narrative for this exhibition. The book openly denounced the apartheid regime and was promptly banned in South Africa. In risk of arrest, Cole had gone into exile in 1966. He would never return to South Africa again. | | | | | | | | | | South Africa, 1960s © Ernest Cole / Magnum Photos | | | | | | | | | | Mamelodi, 1960s, South Africa © Ernest Cole / Magnum Photos | | | | | | About the artist
Living between Sweden and the United States, Cole continued to document Black lives in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. However, being Black and stateless proved debilitating there too, and a publication of his American work would never materialise. Towards the end of his life, Cole became increasingly disillusioned and reportedly started living on the streets of New York. He died at age 49 from pancreatic cancer. Much of Cole’s work had been considered lost, until the rediscovery of 60.000 negatives and contact sheets in the safety deposit boxes of a Swedish bank in 2017.
Besides (colour) images from his time in America, the archive contains unpublished photographs and contact sheets from House of Bondage. The exhibition in Foam is the first large scale overview of Cole’s work to include parts of his retrieved archive. | | | | | | unsubscribe here
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