Zanele Muholi

Becoming a visual activist

Zanele Muholi grew up in Umlazi, a township south of Durban. They trained at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg, the school founded by David Goldblatt, and had a first solo exhibition in 2004. In 2002 they co-founded the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, a Black lesbian organisation in Gauteng, and in 2009 they completed an MFA in documentary media at Ryerson University in Toronto, with a thesis on Black lesbian identity and politics in post-apartheid South Africa. From the beginning their photography was bound up with activism: South Africa's 1996 constitution was the first in the world to protect people from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, yet Black lesbians and trans people were — and are — targets of violence, including so-called "corrective" rape and murder.

Muholi chose to call themself a visual activist rather than an artist. The aim, as they have described it, is to make sure that Black queer South Africans are seen, remembered and represented by themselves rather than by others.

Faces and Phases

In 2006 Muholi began Faces and Phases, black-and-white portraits of Black lesbians and trans people, each photographed looking straight at the camera. The series has grown to hundreds of portraits taken over many years (one count of the large-format prints is more than 240), sometimes of the same person at different times, and includes people who have since died, some of them victims of hate crimes. It is at once a celebration, a record and a memorial.

How to look at them: the prints are black-and-white silver gelatin portraits made in large format, and each is captioned with the sitter's name, the place and the year, as in Nosi 'Ginga' Marumo, Johannesburg, 2007. Read the caption before you read the face. The name and place turn a portrait into a record, and returning to the same person years later shows that these are lives, not types.

Somnyama Ngonyama

In 2012 Muholi began Somnyama Ngonyama, a series of self-portraits. Using everyday materials — scouring pads, latex gloves, rubber tyres — as costume and props, and darkening their skin in the image, Muholi addresses labour, racism, the history of the colonial photograph and the politics of how Black people are seen. The series has been shown around the world, including at the 2019 Venice Biennale. The touring exhibition Somnyama Ngonyama: Hail the Dark Lioness, organised by Autograph in London, has been presented in partnership with the Seattle Art Museum, which counts seventy-six portraits in its version, taken mainly between 2014 and 2017, each with an isiZulu title.

How to look at them: read the props as well as the face. Scouring pads, rubber tyres and latex gloves are domestic and industrial objects, and in these portraits they are worn as costume and regalia, so work, race and dignity are all in the same frame. Then read the title. Each portrait carries an isiZulu title, and isiZulu is Muholi's first language; the series is made in Johannesburg, where Muholi now lives, and then travels.

Recognition

Tate Modern in London presented a major survey of Muholi's work from November 2020 to May 2021. In 2009 Muholi founded Inkanyiso, a forum for queer visual media and activism. Muholi is represented by Stevenson in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and by Yancey Richardson in New York; their websites and Tate's are the best places to check for current shows, since the work travels. They are among the artists in our guides to African women artists and contemporary African art.

See also

African photography, Southern Africa and our list of South African photographers.