Kabelo Mofokeng
nationality
South africa
area
photography
recidence
South africa
institution
foto arsenal wien
time period
may – June 2026
01
BIO
Kabelo Mofokeng (born 1989) is a Johannesburg-based photographer and cultural worker. She works across photography, moving image, and curatorial collaboration, exploring how images circulate, how value is assigned, and how audiences encounter and interpret contemporary art in South Africa. Her practice is shaped by the intersections of personal experience, social systems, and cultural institutions.
She is currently completing a BArch (Honours) at the University of the Witwatersrand (2025–2026), with postgraduate coursework in studio practice, curatorial theory, and research in contemporary visual culture. She trained in photography at the Market Theatre Workshop (2018–2019), studied Strategic Brand Communication at Vega School (2014–2015), and Film Production at AFDA – The South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance (2009–2011). Since 2021, she has worked at the Johannesburg Contemporary Art Foundation (JCAF), facilitating exhibitions and public programming.
02
Project
In Room Divider, she investigates domestic and institutional fractures, using separation and layering to reflect on personal histories and the hierarchies embedded in cultural spaces. In The Bureaucratic Office of Care (BOOC), she examines how care is formalised and regulated through institutional systems. The installation uses desks, chairs, clipboards, printed forms, and an induction-style video to construct a recognisable yet controlled office environment, where relational and emotional labour is translated into procedural structures. The work explores how space, design, and systems condition behaviour, expectation, and the ways care is administered and experienced.