Tshepiso Mazibuko’s Ho tshepa ntshepedi ya bontshepe looks at the political designation of “bornfree” on black youth born after 1994 in South Africa. The title of this body of work, ‘Ho tshepa ntshepedi ya bontshepe ’, is a Sesotho proverb meaning to expect something that will never happen. Mazibuko reads this proverb in the paradox of the term “bornfree”, as an illusion that places youth born after 1994 in a position of temporal “freedom”. However, due to the structural remnants of apartheid this freedom has not been fully realised for all. This is further complicated by cross-generational desires and hopes that meet through political and familial expectations on “bornfrees”. Mazibuko uses this designation as a prompt to turn her camera inwards to think about individual self-positioning, and to uncover her particular position in relation to her community within current societal constructs. She writes: “This is a project of understanding people’s wounds, and mine. Of being empathetic. The intimacy that is present when photographing comes perhaps from sharing wounds that are similar to each other. We were covering representations of how deep the wound really is. It’s a journey of me looking for myself or finding pieces of myself in all the people photographed and their experiences.”

Tshepiso Mazibuko was born in Thokoza, South Africa in 1995. Mazibuko uses the medium of photography to add commentary on politics, society, landscape and history. Mazibuko completed her studies in photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg in 2016. She has exhibited her work at Ithuba Art Gallery in Johannesburg, The Ghent Photo Festival in Belgium, The Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Warren Editions in Cape Town, the Art Africa Fair in Cape Town, as well as the Addis Foto Fest in Ethiopia. She lives and works in Thokoza.