Vuyo Mabheka

In South Africa, “popihuise” is the word for doll’s house in Xhosa, one of the country’s eleven official languages. Vuyo Mabheka chose this intriguing title for his project, which received the Images Vevey Special Jury Prize 2023/2024. This young photographer adopted an experimental approach to create a visual narrative driven by his personal experience. Vuyo Mabheka grew up in a township, fatherless and with his mother mostly away from home. Drawing on his hard life story, he created a series of hybrid collages from cut-outs of the few photographs he had of himself as a child. Somewhere between reality and fiction, these settings became spaces where he could reimagine his childhood, his relationships with his loved ones, and his place in the community. Popihuise reveals how his family and social circumstances shaped his identity in post-apartheid South Africa.