Tshepiso Mazibuko was born in 1995 in the township of Thokoza, located some thirty kilometers south-east of Johannesburg, where she lives and works. These biographical details hold crucial significance for her project, entitled Ho tshepa ntshepedi ya bontshepe, a Sesotho proverb meaning “to believe in something that will never happen”.

Indeed, her work delves into the experience of the born free generation, referring to the black generation born after the end of Apartheid, to which she belongs. Beyond the hope raised thirty years ago, what does the phrase born free mean today? How can one feel free in a severely unequal society where urban planning bears the scars of the past? Through portraits of young people photographed in their daily lives in Thokoza, the photographer takes an inside look at her community. Adopting an introspective approach, she paints an intimate portrait where frustration and benevolence coexist, where violence is latent, where faces are often tense, sometimes strained sometimes proud, occasionally absorbed but rarely light-hearted. The artist evokes her own frustration with the notion of born free, the trauma and responsibility inherited by her generation, the pervasive sense of sadness in a vulnerable place. Children, teenagers and young adults are the principal characters in these images, in which cracks, snags and gashes abound. Tshepiso Mazibuko's images seem to be suspended in time, as in this truncated portrait where fingerprints spot the garment, where something stumbles but a form of resistance emerges.