Comprising two bodies of work, Brave Beauties and Somnyama Ngonyama (‘Hail, the Dark Lioness’), this exhibition at Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York brings together two integral elements within Muholi’s practice; intimate studies of queer life in her native South Africa and self portraiture.
Begun in 2014, Brave Beauties is a series of portraits depicting transwomen in South Africa, and as such represents an overt challenge to a culture that continues to violently discriminate against the LGBTQI community. In a similar vein to the ongoing project Faces and Phases, Muholi creates celebratory photographs of empowered individuals who assert their identities through their confident poses, taking ownership of the spaces they inhabit.
Turning the camera on herself for the Somnyama Ngonyama series, Muholi explores the concepts of self-representation and self-definition by experimenting with different characters and archetypes. The photographs, taken in various cities throughout Europe, the U.S., Asia and Africa, use ad hoc settings and everyday objects as props to reference South African political history, contemporary existence and events in the artist’s personal life. Seen together, these images map her movements as she travels across the world. One image from this series will be exhibited as a floor to ceiling wallpaper. Monumental in scale, the photograph boldly asserts its status as a singular object, forcing the viewer to confront their desire to gaze at Muholi’s black figure.
In both bodies of work, Muholi uses portraiture as a form of exposure to disrupt the dominant images of black women in the media today and to bear witness to both the brutality and the joy of black, queer, lesbian, and transgendered individuals in South Africa. In a recent article in The Guardian, Muholi stated: “This is about our lives, and if queer history, trans history, if politics of blackness and self-representation are so key in our lives, we just cannot sit down and not document and bring it forth.”
Zanele Muholi
November 2 to December 9, 2017
Yancey Richardson Gallery
525 W 22nd St
New York, NY 10011
USA
