South African-Dutch photographer Farren van Wyk is currently showcased at Photo Elysée Lausanne in the Gen Z exhibition at the Dutch Studio as part of Photo Days 2025. Her compelling work explores the complex themes of apartheid and mixed heritage, earning recognition from collaborator Zoé Isle de Beauchaine at Photo Days. Van Wyk's project "Mixedness is my Mythology" examines the intricate historical relationship between South Africa and the Netherlands, highlighting connections and contradictions surrounding migration, ethnicity, colonialism, and apartheid.
Born in South Africa in 1993, the final official year of the apartheid era, van Wyk was classified as "Coloured" under the racist categorization system. Her personal history reflects the broader trauma of apartheid displacement, as her grandparents were forcibly removed from their homes. When she was six years old, her parents made the decision to raise her in the Netherlands, creating a unique bicultural perspective that deeply influences her artistic work.
"Being born in South Africa and raised in the Netherlands created an intersection point from which I gather, through images, South African, Dutch, African-American, and Black American cultural aspects," van Wyk explains. Her family exists in what she describes as a "gray area," where they actively deconstruct the apartheid construction of "colouredness" in order to reclaim it for themselves. This process of reclamation forms the foundation of her photographic practice.
Van Wyk emphasizes that identity is deeply personal, and her family's identity remains deliberately undefined and indeterminate as it incorporates multiple origins. This multiplicity inspires her to create images featuring members of her family, transforming their lived experience into visual mythology. Her conscious choice to work with black and white analog photography serves as a direct response to historical anthropological images that dehumanized racialized people in South Africa, which were used to support racial theories and legalized oppression.
"Neither black nor white, a racialized person is a shade of gray where everything becomes possible," van Wyk states. "In this gray area, I use photography to claim and redefine what it means to be a person of color." Her series serves as both testimony to reconciliation and acceptance of mixed identity, while simultaneously forging new iconography that creates her family's mythology—ultimately functioning as an ode to being Coloured.
Born in 1993, Farren van Wyk is a photographer and educator who holds dual South African and Dutch citizenship. She earned a Bachelor's degree in photography and a Master's degree in cultural and visual anthropology, academic credentials that inform her nuanced approach to identity documentation. Her truly dual perspective on both countries of origin is evident throughout her work, as her photographs demonstrate her attempts to confront both faces of colonialism, the slave trade, and apartheid.
Van Wyk maintains active membership in several prestigious photography organizations, including the African Photojournalist Association with World Press Photo, Women Photograph, and Black Women Photographers. Her powerful imagery has gained international recognition, with her work being published by major media outlets including i-D, The Washington Post, Photo Vogue, Der Greif, and The Times UK, establishing her as an important voice in contemporary photography addressing themes of identity, heritage, and historical reconciliation.
