About the artist
Zanele Muholi (b. 1972) is a South African visual activist whose pronouns are they/them/their. Muholi, who works in photography, video and installation, has described themselves as a visual activist as opposed to an artist. This is because, since the early 2000s, they have been uniquely dedicated to increasing the visibility of LGBTQIA+ people. Most of their artworks aim to amend and expand the art historical canon.
Muholi was born in Umlazi, Durban, West of South Africa, as the youngest of eight children. Muholi’s father died shortly after their birth, and their mother had to leave the family to earn money. Muholi and their siblings were subsequently raised by extended family.
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Muholi studied Advanced Photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg, and additionally completed a MFA in Documentary Media at Ryerson University in Toronto. Their thesis mapped the visual history of black lesbian identity and politics in post-Apartheid South Africa. The artist now lives and works in Johannesburg.
Photographs and artistic style
Muholi’s work subverts the typical representations of Africans and black individuals. They aim to capture the contemporary queer community objectively as a record for future generations. In this way, their work can be considered documentary: it records this queer community and the challenges they face. But rather than focus on negativity or violence, as do most other activists, Muholi instead focuses on capturing individuality.
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Muholi views their portraits as collaborative endeavors, referring to the sitters as ‘participants’ rather than ‘subjects'. The artist aims to empower the sitters, and has been known to invite them to speak at events and exhibitions in order to include their voices in the conversation.
The activist’s early series, Only Half the Picture (2003-06), showed intimate moments alongside intense suffering. It commented on the trauma and violence LGBTQIA+ communities continued to face in South Africa, despite the equality the government promised in its 1996 constitution.
Faces and Phases
Muholi’s best known photograph series is Faces and Phases. In this ongoing project, Muholi takes black-and-white portraits of black lesbian and transgender individuals. The sitters look directly into Muholi’s camera, challenging the viewer with their gazes. Each portrait is accompanied by a testimony, which reveals how many of these individuals are hate crime survivors who have endured ‘corrective rape’ because of their identities. Quite a few have also been infected with HIV. The portraits and the accompanying testimonies form a still-growing archive of individuals who live authentically and without fear.
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Faces and Phases responds to the continuing violence faced by LGBTQIA+ communities in South Africa. With this series, Muholi aims to offset the stigma and taboos attached to queer identities. The work democratically represents what it means to be South African: the images “re-write a black, queer and trans visual history of South Africa,” according to Mulholi.
Current work, awards and prizes
Muholi’s most recent series is Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness). In these photographs, Muholi becomes both the participant and the photographer, turning the camera inwards on themselves. By exaggerating the darkness of their skin, Muholi reclaims their blackness, and offsets the typical images of black women in today’s mainstream media. Unlike these typical images of black women, which are hyper-sexualized or angry, Muholi represents themselves as intelligent, powerful and spiritual. Experimenting with various characters, Muholi’s self-portraits in Somnyama Ngonyama reference specific events in South Africa’s political history.
Muholi has found incredible success and has been widely celebrated for their work. In 2015, they were shortlisted for the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize and a year later received an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography. They also received an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 2018.
The Tate Modern held a solo exhibition of their work in 2021, and Muholi’s work was also shown at the Autograph artist centre in Shoreditch, London.
At auction, their work is known to reach tens of thousands. For example, Mulholi’s Babaza I, Philadelphia (from the series ‘Somnyama Ngonyama, 2019) achieved £23,750 ($33,600) at Sotheby’s in 2021, 138% above its pre-sale estimate.
The artist continues to photograph and produce work, so keep an eye out for future projects.
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Article by Amanda Andrade
