Leah Rachel Hawker
Post graduate diploma in fine art
Michaelis School of Fine Art
Graduates: 2023
Specialisms: Photography / Storytelling / Fine Art
My location: Cape Town, South Africa
Leah Rachel Hawker
First Name: Leah Rachel
Last Name: Hawker
University / College: Michaelis School of Fine Art
Course / Program: Post graduate diploma in fine art
Graduates: 2023
Specialisms: Photography / Storytelling / Fine Art
My Location: Cape Town, South Africa
About
Leah Rachel Hawker (b.1983) is a South African artist. She completed a post-graduate diploma (with distinction) in fine art at the University of Cape Town in 2023 which took an intimate look at the lives and subsequent identities of GenZ women. She completed her initial studies at Ruth Prowse School of Art (with distinction) in 2005 with a body of work that dealt with female stereotyping. Her passion for image making evolved from a fascination with gender roles in society and our shared human condition. By working with thousands of individuals in all contexts and environments over the last 20 years she has gained immense knowledge and understanding of human behavior. It is in both the public and private domain that she has made these observations, those of our fears and vanities: this is what she brings to her work. She published her documentary art book Breastfeeding 101 (ISBN: 978-1-928440-29-1) in 2019. Leah has placed three times, as a finalist, in both the Sasol New Signatures Competition (2009, 2018, current - 2024) and Vuleka Awards (2006, 2022, current - 2024). She’s placed finalist in the Thami Mnyele Fine Arts, 2021 and in the ANNA Awards 2024. More recently she has exhibited at the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, the University of Johannesburg and the KKNK.She has an upcoming exhibition at Iziko National Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa in 2025. Leah has initiated and worked on a number of curatorial projects, lectured at Western Cape Government seminars and Ruth Prowse Art School. She’s created photo essays for women’s upliftment projects and organizations in South Africa, Tanzania and Sri Lanka to date. She is currently working towards her first solo as well as on a yearlong documentary photo story funded by the National Arts Council for exhibition in 2025.
I’m interested in how events shape who we are and how we behave. This, in turn, shapes our society, one riddled with violence and loneliness. In my body of work, Safe Spaces, I draw from psychology and anthropology in an interdisciplinary body of work (photographs and handcrafted books) that focus on young women just passing the cusp of adolescence into adulthood. The book component shares each young woman's intimate story. The portraits are a visual translations of their contents. In a recorded and transcribed interview each woman told me about herself in a collaborative effort to “distil” her experienced identity. The aim of this process was to create a channel through which the subject and I could, together, develop a photographic portrait ‘brief’. My role: to be a medium, to be the translator. The camera’s role: to be the bridge to you, the viewer. The machine (and its operator) became a compassionate player, not a “taker”; not a “shooter”. The portraits are about identity, one’s private internal world and the one we – consciously or not – choose to portray to the ‘other’. They speak of our vulnerability, the need for places of refuge and the human need for community. We have evidence of arts ability to mobilise audiences if we look at the role theology has served for hundreds of years. We can do this again for contemporary needs by using it as a mechanism for empathy which I believe is necessary for peace.
Competitions
