Zanele Muholi’s profound show during Black History Month explores LGBTQIA+ struggles and racism in South Africa, confronts innate prejudices and uses art as activism.
After only being open for five weeks, the Tate Modern had to close Zanele Muholi’s 2020 exhibition due to Covid-19 restrictions, but it has returned to the Tate this year, starting with her own words: “No one can tell the story better than ourselves”.
The 52-year-old South African is a world-renowned photographer and proclaimed “visual activist”, and they explore the themes of Black LGBTQIA+ struggles, apartheid, and its reminisce in South Africa and self-expression.
Going by they/them pronouns, Muholi describes that “their use of they/them pronoun goes beyond gender identity. It acknowledges their ancestors and the many facets of their identity: ‘There are those who came before me who make me’.”
In the early 2000s, Muholi started documenting the lives of LGBTQIA+ people and their culture in South Africa in conjunction with the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, which they helped co-found in 2002. They have built a repertoire since then and many people trust them to tell their stories.
The exhibition is intentionality not the traditional art museum trip where you look for five seconds, take a picture, and walk off. You will easily spend over an hour absorbing the weight of the themes explored and feeling a cumulation of emotions evoked.
Every exhibition room has a QR code which plays a curated sound bath for the room which “represents a different part of the human body” until it reaches the “head and pituitary gland”.
Created by musician Toya Delazy, a collaborator and friend of Muholi, she did the recordings by “drawing inspiration from encounters with [Zanele Muholi], responding to the love, joy, pain and healing in their photographer.”
Muholi takes you on a tumultuous journey throughout the exhibition, starting with their first series, “Only Half of The Picture”, documenting intimacy as well as hate crime survivors “living across South Africa and their townships”, especially those who have experienced corrective rape, which is described by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA) as “a form of rape of perpetrated against someone on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It is intended to force the victim to conform to heterosexuality or normative gender identity.”
The juxtaposition between showing intimacy and trauma encapsulates the reality of LGBTQIA+ persons in South Africa, although the constitution was the first in the world to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Within the next series, “Faces and Phases”, Muholi documents Black lesbians, transgender and gender non-conforming collaborators and friends of Muholi looking directly into the camera, holding a gaze with the viewer.
There are multiple photographs of the same person in different phases of their lives to document a “transition from one stage of sexuality or gender expression and identity to another” and life changes such as “ageing, education, work and marriage”.
“Brave Beauties” is a colourful portrait series highlighting trans women and gender non-conforming and non-binary people, many of which are Miss Gay Beauty pageant winners & contestants in a fashion magazine lens, allowing the photographed persons to have that editorial look that they may not otherwise get due to prejudice in the magazine industry.
A refreshing breath after the last two series, the bright colours of the portraits leaves you feeling hopeful for LGBTQIA+ people.
“Somnyama Ngonyama”, Zanele’s self-portrait series and my personal favourite, use themself as a muse to encapsulate the stories from themselves, their close circle, and stories of racism, tragedies and turmoil in South Africa.
With the title translating to “Hail the Dark Lioness”, Muholi’s eyes are striking, popping out and evoking a range of emotions the viewer feels within every portrait.
Closing out the exhibition is their latest series, “Collectivity”, highlighting their work at the Muholi Art Institute, which they opened in 2022. The collection showcases Muholi’s love of community and the power of collaboration and coverage of Black LGBTQIA+ communities to avoid erasure.
Muholi’s talents transcend beyond photography, with sculptures and short films scattered across the exhibition. They utilise composition and light to make distinctive political stances and use colour to shift the tonal mood throughout the exhibition.
They have an amazing ability to use the resources around them and show that art is not created just through imagination but comes from the necessity of telling stories.
There is no doubt that the exhibition induces low spirits and may feel overwhelming at times, but that is the least of the issues when confronted with the emotions and experiences of Black LGBTQIA+ that have been constantly ignored, belittled and invalidated.
The Tate took the initiative to alleviate the visitor’s emotions by having a wind-down space once you exit the exhibition, allowing you to reflect on the experience and critically examine your prejudice and gaze.
Speaking to the British Journal of Photography in 2021, Zanele said: “I picked up the camera because there were no images of us that spoke to me at the time when I needed them the most. I had to produce a positive visual narrative of my community and create a new dialogue with images.”
Zanele Muholi’s starting quote rings true: Using themselves as a vessel, they convey the pain, turmoil, love, and freeness of their collaborator’s stories and have truly cemented themselves as a visual activist.
All images by Savannah Robinson.