JOHANNESBURG


3 October - 8 November 2013

CAPE TOWN


17 October - 23 November 2013

Pieter Hugo


Kin


STEVENSON is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Pieter Hugo, titled Kin. This new photographic series will show across both of Stevenson's galleries, premiering in Johannesburg and opening two weeks later in Cape Town.

Kin is a bittersweet perspective on Hugo's homeland of South Africa. It is a meditation on the ideals of home, both familial and humanistic. It explores the tenuous ties that both bind us to and repel us from others.

Over the past eight years Hugo has turned his eye on cramped townships, contested farmlands and abandoned mining areas; psychologically charged still lifes in people's homes; sites of political significance; drifters and the homeless; his pregnant wife, and his daughter moments after her birth; the domestic servants who have worked for the Hugo family over three generations. The series alternates between intimate and public spaces, with particular emphasis on the growing disparity between rich and poor, and reveals Hugo's deeply conflicted feelings about his home. It confronts complex issues of colonisation, racial diversity and economic disparity. Kin endeavours to locate his young family in a country with a fraught history and an uncertain future.

Hugo describes the Kin project as:

an engagement with the failure of the South African colonial experiment and my sense of being 'colonial driftwood' ... South Africa is such a fractured, schizophrenic, wounded and problematic place. It is a very violent society and the scars of colonialism and apartheid still run very deep. Issues of race and cultural custodianship permeate every aspect of society, and the legacy of forced racial segregation casts a long shadow ... How does one live in this society? How does one take responsibility for history, and to what extent should one try? How do you raise a family in such a conflicted society? Before getting married and having children, these questions did not trouble me; now, they are more confusing. This work attempts to address these questions and to reflect on the nature of conflicting personal and collective narratives. I have deeply mixed feelings about being here. I am interested in the places where these narratives collide. Kin is an attempt at evaluating the gap between society's ideals and its realities.

Hugo was born in 1976 in Johannesburg and grew up in Cape Town, where he lives. His survey exhibition, This Must Be the Place, has showed at the Fotomuseum Den Haag, The Netherlands; Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland; Stimultania Photographic Centre, Strasbourg, France (2012); Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary (2013); and continues to tour. Some recent group exhibitions include Present Tense, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal (2013); Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive, The Walther Collection, Ulm, Germany (2013); Africa: Photographs and video from the Martin Margulies Collection, Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, Edison State College, Florida, USA (2012); Africa, There and Back, Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany (2012); Qui Vive? 3rd Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Russia (2012); FotoTriennale.dk, Funen, Denmark (2012); Contact Photography Festival, Toronto, Canada (2011); ARS 11, Kiasma, Helsinki Museum of Contemporary Art, Finland (2011); Figures and Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography, V&A Museum, London, UK (2011); The Eye is a Lonely Hunter: Images of Humankind, Fotofestival Mannheim Ludwigshafen Heidelberg, Germany (2011); and The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds after 1989, ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany (2011). Hugo won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art in 2007; the KLM Paul Huf Award and the Arles Discovery Award at the Rencontres d'Arles Photography Festival in 2008; the Seydou Keita Award at the 9th Rencontres de Bamako African Photography Biennial, Mali, in 2011, and was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse photography prize in 2012.

The exhibition opens in Johannesburg on Thursday 3 October, 6 to 8pm, and runs until 8 November. It opens in Cape Town on Thursday 17 October, 6 to 8pm, and runs until 23 November.

The galleries are open from Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, and Saturday from 10am to 1pm.



Sunrise, Blombos farm, 2013

Saunders Rock, Cape Town, 2013

Green Point Common, Cape Town, 2013

In the Van Zyls' kitchen, Welgemoed, 2013

Rina Veldsman, Monte Rosa Old Age Home, Cape Town, 2013

Inside Martin's home, Ottery, 2013

Pozio 'Patrick Pietersen' Gates, Cape Town, 2011

'Bobo' on the Muizenberg beachfront where he sleeps, 2008

Shaun Oliver, Cape Town, 2011

Louis Matanisa, Cape Town, 2013

Inside Louis Matanisa's home, Cape Town, 2013

Nokhanyo and Ayabukwa Mabuse, Langa, 2013

Cape Town, 2009

Wax mannequin of Louis Washkansky, the world's first heart transplant recipient, at the Heart of Cape Town Museum, 2008

On the desk of Reinhold Rau at the Iziko South African Museum, Cape Town, 2006

Green Point Common, Cape Town, 2013

Rest area on the road to Llandudno, 2008

Darren and Tara, Durban, 2013

Lize and Gideon Hugo, Gonnemanskraal, 2009

Sheep farm on the road to Caledon, 2011

Thabile Kadeni, Langa, 2013

Kitty Fay, Tamboerskloof, 2010

André Hugo and Martje Potgieter with their firstborn, Leon Hugo, on the day of their wedding, Yzerfontein, 2009

Donkeys feeding between Caledon and Botrivier, 2012

Daniela Beukman, Milnerton, 2013

Daniel Richards, Milnerton, 2013

Mimi Afrika, Wheatland Farm, Graaff-Reinet, 2013

Ann Sallies, who worked for my parents and helped raise me, Douglas, 2013

Tamsyn Reynolds pregnant with our first child, Cape Town, 2010

Sophia Hugo on the day of her birth, Cape Town, 2010

Pieter and Sophia Hugo at home in Cape Town, 2010

Anna Hugo, my grandmother, Cape Town, 2009

Inside Arcadia Place old-age home, Observatory, 2013

Outside Noupoort, 2013

Inside the Besters' home, Vermaaklikheid, 2013

Linda Ntsukwana, Colesberg, 2013

Hendrik Claasen with his daughter Chelsea, Graaff-Reinet, 2013

Dirk and Maryna Swanepoel, Jansenville, 2013

Jan Wieneke, Orania, 2013

At Rietpoort farm, Graaff-Reinet, 2013

At Rietpoort farm, Graaff-Reinet, 2013

Iandisa Mtoyonke, Cape Town, 2007

Paul Ndudula, Cape Town, 2007

Madoda Mabandla, Cape Town, 2007

Samuel Nkosomzi, Cape Town, 2007

Mxolisi Gwejeka, Cape Town, 2007

Maria Linder, Kenhardt, 2013

In Johanna Volschenk's home, Noupoort, 2013

Joshua, Jan, Magrietha and Lizette Boer, Middelburg, 2013

En route to the Tsitsikamma National Park, 2012

Tamsyn Reynolds pregnant with our second child, Cape Town, 2013

Sfiso Lukhele, Soweto, 2013

Danville, 2013

Aerial view of Dainfern gated community, 2013

Aerial view of Diepsloot, Johannesburg, 2013

At a traffic intersection, Johannesburg, 2011

Outside Michael's flat, Troyeville, 2011

Main Reef Road, East Rand, 2012

War memorial, Springs, 2012

Name withheld, Langaville, Ekurhuleni, 2012

In the home of Meshack Molatudi, Robinson Lake, Harmony Mine, Randfontein 2012

Primrose Mines, Main Reef Road, Germiston, 2012

Ricky Davis, Brakpan, 2012

Inside a squatted mining house, Primrose Mines, Main Reef Road, Germiston, 2012

Winston Niebuhr, Cape Town, 2013

Vegetable garden at the Portuguese club in Pretoria, 2011

Siphiwe Mafilika, Diepsloot, 2011

Katharina Shaw, Sanddrift, 2012

Gustaf, Maureen, Koos and Marco Louw in their home, Musina, 2006

Waiting for work, Krugersdorp, 2012

Marlene Bergman with Tipsy, Jan Hofmeyer, 2013

Thoba Calvin and Tshepo Cameron Sithole-Modisane, Pretoria, 2013

Fordsburg, 2012

The reception room outside ex-president Kaiser Matanzima's bedroom in the now-defunct bantustan of Transkei, Mthatha, 2008

Loyiso Mayga, Wandise Ngcama, Lunga White, Luyanda Mzantsi and Khungsile Mdolo after their initiation ceremony, Mthatha, 2008

Plants for sale on the corner of Owen and Sutherland streets, Mthatha, 2008

The children's ward in an abandoned tuberculosis hospital, Mthatha, 2008

A traditional kraal outside Mvezo, Eastern Cape, 2010

Mandla Mandela, grandson of Nelson Mandela and chief of the Mvezo Traditional Council, Mthatha, 2010

The view from ex-president Kaiser Matanzima's bedroom in the now-defunct bantustan of Transkei, Mthatha, 2008

In the Vredefort Dome, 2013

Meriam 'Mary' Tlali, who spent her entire adult life working as a maid for my grandmother, Kroonstad, 2011

Inside Hudson Kungu's home, Virginia, 2013

Neels du Plooy, Hennenman, 2013

Rest area outside Montagu, 2013

Tafelberg Road, Cape Town, 2013

Monument to the 34 miners killed by police during the Lonmin strike, Marikana, 2013

Outside Pretoria, 2013

At the Voortrekker Monument, 2013

Fanie Meintjes, Johannesburg, 2013

In Sipho Ntsibande's home, Soweto, 2013

Hillbrow, 2013

The Miners' Monument, Braamfontein, 2013

On the highway outside Johannesburg, 2013

Theresa Makwenya, Carletonville, 2013

With my son, Jakob Hugo, Natures Valley, 2014