Zanele Muholi : “You are not alone”

A person’s sexuality and gender are not skin deep, visual activist and photographer Zanele Muholi declares.

“It’s not about the clothes that we wear, how you speak, how you walk. The queer self is the heart in my world. Every human being is beautiful. It’s the kindness and what comes from within that is beautiful. It’s not the outer layer.”

When Muholi photographs the participants of their work (they refers to the people in their photos as participants, rather than subjects or models) they explain that they don’t necessarily try to capture their beauty. They rather try to document the realities of South Africa’s black LGBTQI communities. “They are people who deserve to be heard, who deserve to be seen and whose lives are often excluded as part of the art history canon.” 

In the past decade, Muholi has distinguished themselves as one of South Africa’s most prodigious visual artists, with solo exhibitions in renowned international museums and galleries such as the Stedelijk in Amsterdam and The Tate Modern in Britain. The artist, who was born in Durban in 1972, speaks to social issues such as racism, homophobia and gender violence and challenges the parochial prejudices their communities still face.

The British newspaper, The Observer, called Muholi’s 2020 Tate Modern exhibition “epochal, monumental and full of grace,” in a review and awarded it five stars. The review also referred to Muholi as “one of the most acclaimed photographers working today”.

Muholi’s MuMu XIX, a self-portrait from the artist’s open-ended series Somnyama Ngonyama: Hail the Dark Lioness sold for close to half a million rand during leading auction house Strauss & Co’s Johannesburg Auction Week in November 2021. 

The artwork is an evocative self-portrait, which takes on a regal quality, with the artist’s clothing and headgear occupying a large portion of the composition. It was taken in Newington, London, in 2019, a year after renowned South African photographer David Goldblatt, an important mentor and supporter of Muholi’s work died. 

In December another portrait in this series Ngizwe I, Apt #2 Paragon Crescent, Windhoek, Namibia sold for R320 000 during a fundraising auction for the Norval Institute.

“Muholi has established themselves as a sought after artist among contemporary art collectors and remains a stalwart in the South African secondary art market,” says Jean le Clus, senior art specialist at Strauss & Co. 

Muholi’s striking monochromatic images have created awareness around South Africa’s LGBTQ communities and the ongoing discrimination these groups face. Although their images address deeply disturbing issues such as sexual violence, homophobia and discrimination, the artist characteristically portrays their participants with dignity, agency and power. 

Muholi uses techniques such as graphic contrast between black and white as a type of visual protest language, and reappropriates objects of violence and suppression that were used on black bodies as decorative objects. Pencils – making reference to the notorious apartheid-era pencil test the regime used to determine a person’s ethnicity – becomes an elaborate headdress. Pot scourers, symbols of domestic subjugation for many black women, are repurposed as decorative hair accessories and convey instead an impression of high fashion and glamour.

In an interview with The Tate Modern in 2020, Muholi explains that the images she creates are for every person – whether it’s a teacher or a mother whose child is queer and who needs a reference for them and their families.

“These images show them that they’re not alone. It’s for the LGBTI community – so they can understand their worthiness. My images are also political. They say: ‘How do we politicize the spaces we consciously occupy ourselves, that tend to be ignored by those who are in positions of power?'”

The artist has at times faced a backlash from political leaders – in 2010, South Africa’s then minister of arts and culture, Lulu Xingwana, denounced Muholi’s work as “immoral and offensive” because it included images of naked, black women embracing each other. 

Xingwana slammed the work as “pornographic”. 

Muholi was incredibly disturbed by Xingwana’s views. “Those pictures are based on experience and issues. Where else can we express ourselves if not in our democratic country?” they retorted in an interview with The Times. 

“We can’t rely on others to represent us adequately or allow them to deny our existence. Hence I am producing this photographic document to encourage individuals in my community to be brave enough to occupy spaces – brave enough to create without fear of being vilified, brave enough to take on that visual text, those visual narratives,” she said in conservation with Renée Mussai, a London-based curator, writer and art historian.