PICTURE THIS: Continuing its ties to emerging artists and photographers, Dior is again participating in the Kyotographie International Photography Festival by supporting an exhibition by Lebohang Kganye and Momo Nakagawa.
The 14th edition of the festival in Kyoto, Japan, runs from April 18 to May 17, and has a special focus on South Africa’s burgeoning art scene.
Kganye, who last year joined the jury for the Dior Prize for Photography and Visual Arts for Young Talents in Arles, merges photography, video and installations to weave “connections between personal memory and collective history,” according to Dior.
Her exhibition will unfurl at the Higashi Hongan-ji Temple, a 19th-century center of Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism prized for its vast wooden structures. For the scenography, washi paper will be used to echo the toiles used to create haute couture silhouettes.
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Among the Kganye works going on display are: “Ke Lefa Laka: Her-Story,” which revives family memories in its reenactment of old images, fusing past and present; “Mohlokomedi wa Tora,” which “inscribes memory into space”; “Keep the Light Faithfully,” a series inspired by lighthouse keepers and their stories about solitude and transmission, and “Mosebetsi wa Dirithi,” described as “a constellation of monumental silhouettes from family photo albums.”
In addition, at the KG+ satellite event, Parfums Christian Dior is underwriting an exhibition by Nakagawa, who was a finalist in the last Dior Photography and Visual Arts Prize for Young Talents. Kganye will curate the show by the Kyoto-based artist, who started out in fashion and music “before eventually finding her way to photography,” according to Dior.
Titled “Clonal Images,” the exhibition features large collages inspired by science fiction, and the prospect of humans mutating to survive space colonization.
Dior‘s fascination with Japan began with founder Christian Dior in the 1950s, and extended right up to recent times, since Kyoto was where Dior staged its pre-fall 2025 show. This is the fifth year the fashion house has linked up with Kyotographie.
