Mikhael Subotzky (b. 1981) has used this ‘sticky-tape transfer’ process for over a decade. He takes sticky-tape, perhaps an unassuming artistic material, and lays it over inkjet-print photographs – found images from encyclopaedias, photography manuals or from the artist’s own archive – and gently lifts off the pigment from the paper support, to remake something else entirely. Sometimes these take the form of framed and solidified triptychs; other times, the works embody a more free-flowing, diaphanous structure.

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It makes sense that processes of separation are at the heart of Subotzky’s practice. He grew up in a white middle class family in Cape Town, where this seemingly comfortable experience was fractured by violence and illness from within the home. This was at a time when the entire country was emerging out of apartheid amidst deep-rooted racial and class inequity. As an artist, Subotzky confronts imbalances of power on both personal and societal levels: he interrogates the construct of whiteness and the legacies of colonialism within his South African homeland, while turning his attention inwards to analyse more personal relationships with his community, friends and family, particularly with his father.

Excerpted from a text by curator Jessica Baxter, first published on the Magnum Photos website in November 2023 on the occasion of the exhibition Ukuzilanda, Homegoing, Cromwell House, London.