Writing Art History Since 2002

First Title

‘Gated Communities’,a solo exhibition by Lindeka Qampi with over 50 artworks including her self portraits on show at M.Bassy in Hamburg.

© Lindiwe Qampi
© Lindiwe Qampi

Multi-award winning photographer and visual artist, born in the Eastern Cape, residing in Cape Town showcases solo in Hamburg, Germany. Qampi showcases her works both created in Cape Town, South Africa and during her stay in Hamburg, Germany.

Gated community is a term used for parks with beautiful houses where wealthy people feel protected by high fences and grim men at the GATE from potentially dangerous fellow citizens. Symmetrically flipped like the positive negative of a photo, the term can be seen as a metaphor for confining and marginalising part of a population, like in a ghetto. Lindeka Qampi’s ‘Gated Communities’ showcases photos from the hard life in her township Khayelitsha near Cape Town, and of privileged neighbourhoods with private beaches. 

In Hamburg she photographed daily life on markets, subways, exhibition openings, just as European tourists would do when traveling on the African continent. In a series of performative self-portraits she used Hamburg as a stage back-drop.  In addition, she documented during her two months stay traces of the colonial activities of some of Hamburg’s citizens that led to economic empires. Photos taken in Cape Town and Hamburg, investigating inclusion and exclusion. 3rd guest of Reversed Exploration, an artists’ residence in Hamburg hosted by Kulturforum Süd-Nord. 

Qampi, speaking about the importance of showing both works created in Cape Town and Hamburg, she says; “I wanted to show reality of the two cities which is Cape Town & Hamburg in a very honest way through images and similarities of colonisation in South Africa and Germany. I am excited to have the opportunity to be able to document both spaces and able to present my work the way I see fit. 

About Lindeka Qampi

Lindeka Qampi was born in 1968 in Bolotwa in the Eastern Cape. Qampi began taking photographs in 2006, when she met members of the Iliso Labantu (the eye of the people), a community-based photo collective. She began as a street photographer and photographing weddings, events, and portraits. Soon she moved on to exploring her community in different ways, such as a project on street culture. She focuses her lens on daily township life, with particular attention on Khayelits ha, the township in which she has lived since her teens. Her photographs express the poetry and politics of the ‘ordinary act’ and therein the potential of imagining new possibilities for the future. In 2015 Kulturforum Süd-Nord invited her and Zanele Muholi to come to Benin to give photo-workshops to teenagers on the theme of violence towards women. She has received multiple awards including an Imbokodo Award, Brave Award and Cape Flats Alumnia.

The exhibition will be on view from the 18th of June until the 2nd of July 2022. For more information, please visit M.Bassy.

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