By Alliance Communications Coordinator Amy Durr
“The work that I produce is meant to be for every person. It could be a teacher. It could be a mother whose child is queer and wants to have a reference point to show to their kids and say that you are not alone. And it could be for the LGBTI people themselves to understand their worthiness.”
— Zanele Muholi, in conversation with Tate
Having a child who is more than two of the words contained in the acronym LGBTQIA, I find myself hungry for representation of this community in visual arts. Hungry may be a crude way of putting it.
And yet, hunger is the way it feels. Not in any sexual way, although certainly some of Muholi’s work is purposefully, unapologetically sexual. No, more in the way of seeing the innumerable constellation of humans in their own particular radiances. Muholi gives me this gift, and I’m grateful.
Zanele Muholi, who uses they/them pronouns, is a South African visual activist and photographer whose self-proclaimed mission is “to re-write a Black queer and trans visual history of South Africa for the world to know of our resistance and existence.”
For over a decade, they have documented Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex lives in South Africa, responding to the continuing discrimination and violence faced by LGBTQ+ people there and everywhere.
Their ongoing series Faces and Phases, begun in 2006, depicts Black lesbian and transgender individuals in portraits of extraordinary dignity. These images are meant to offset the stigma and violence attached to queer identity, and to contribute toward a more democratic and representative visual history.
Their self-portrait series, Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Black Lioness) is something else entirely. Through dramatic lighting and deep contrast, Muholi uses their own body as canvas: reclaiming blackness, confronting the legacies of colonialism and apartheid, defying Eurocentric beauty standards with a gaze that is confrontational, witty, and searingly alive.
The photographs blur the line between photography and painting. They are impossible to look away from.
Muholi’s work holds more than I can name here — racism, domesticity, labor rights, homophobia, transphobia, the long reach of colonialism. It feels impossible to hold all of the ideas at once.
So I will set aside the intellectualism of these shimmering threads and return to what I know: I am overwhelmed and exhilarated, full of grief and hope.
I want the world to be better for people like Zanele Muholi, and for my beloved child.