Zanele Muholi: Ntozakhe II, Parktown 2016. Courtesy of the Artist and Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York (c) Zanele Muholi
Zanele Muholi at Tate Modern Tate Modern presents the first major UK survey of South African visual activist Zanele Muholi. 29 April – 18 October 2020]]>
Source: Tate Modern
260 photographs will be brought together to present the full breadth of Muholi’s career to date, from their very first body of work “Only Half the Picture”, to their on-going series “Somnyama Ngonyama”. These works challenge dominant ideologies and representations, presenting the participants in their photographs as fellow human beings bravely existing in the face of prejudice, intolerance and often violence.
During the 1990s, South Africa underwent major social and political changes. While the country’s 1996 post-apartheid constitution was the first in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation, the LGBTQIA+ community remains a target for violence and prejudice to this day. In the early series “Only Half the Picture” Muholi aimed at depicting the complexities of gender and sexuality for the individuals of the queer community. The collection includes moments of love and intimacy as well intense images alluding to traumatic events in the lives of the participants. Muholi also began an ongoing visual archive of portraits, “Faces and Phases”, which commemorates and celebrates black lesbians, transgender people and gender non-conforming individuals. Each participant looks directly at the camera, challenging the viewer to hold their gaze, while individual testimonies capture their stories. The images and testimonies form a living and growing archive of this community in South Africa and beyond.
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