ZANELE MUHOLI, South Africa
Article titled:“Faces and Phases: Portraits from South Africa’s Lesbian Community”
Despite being the first country to draft a constitution that explicitly forbids discrimination based on sexuality, “hostility toward ‘difference’ has barely slackened,” she writes, “and crimes against gays, and women, have increased.” One in every two women in the country can expect to be raped at least once in her lifetime.
Such attacks have been the driving force behind the work of South African photographer and visual activist Zanele Muholi, whom we commissioned to photograph Lungile Cleopatra Dladla, a survivor of “corrective” rape and one of the subjects of Hunter-Gault’s piece. “In the face of all the challenges our community encounters daily,” Muloli told me, “I embarked on a journey of visual activism to insure that there is black queer visibility.”Muholi had photographed Dladla already, in fact, as part of “Faces and Phases,” a series of more than two hundred portraits of South Africa’s lesbian community. “Collectively, the portraits are at once a visual statement and an archive,” Muholi explained, “marking, mapping and preserving an often invisible community for posterity.”
Muholi herself became a victim of a targeted attack last month, when the flat she lives in with her partner was broken into and over twenty of her hard drives were stolen, effectively erasing the last five years of work that Muholi has been tirelessly building. “I’m still traumatized by the burglary,” she told me. “It’s hard to fall asleep in this place, which is now a crime scene, as I dealt with many crime scenes before.”
Contributions to help Muholi replace her stolen equipment can be made through this Indiegogo campaign
Published by The New Yorker, 5/22/12
(Source: myqueertestimony)
Judy Seidman, 1981.
Medu poster in commemoration of South African Women’s Day; words from song sung by women protesters in march on Pretoria in 1955; poster conception based upon collective discussion by Medu Arts Ensemble graphics unit.
“The Reign” by South African Mary Sibande from the series “Long Live the Dead Queen”
“In Sibande’s practice as an artist, she employs the human form as a vehicle through painting and sculpture, to explore the construction of identity in a postcolonial South African context, but also attempts to critique stereotypical depictions of women, particularly black women in our society.
The body, for Sibande, and particularly the skin, and clothing is the site where history is contested and where fantasies play out. Centrally, she looks at the generational disempowerment of the black woman and in this sense her work is informed by postcolonial theory, through her art making. In her work, the domestic setting acts as a stage where historical psycho-dramas play out.
Sibande’s work also highlights how privileged ideals of beauty and femininity aspired to by black women discipline their body through rituals of imitation and reproduction. She inverts the social power indexed by Victorian costumes by reconfiguring it as a domestic worker’s “uniform” complexifying the colonial relationship between “slave” and “master” in a post-apartheid context. The fabric used to produce uniforms for domestic workers is an instantly recognizable sight in domestic spaces in South Africa and by applying it to Victorian dress she attempts to make a comment about history of servitude as it relates to the present in terms of domestic relationships.” (via Gallery Momo)
fyeahafrica: tobia: dhool: “Since Apartheid’s fall in 1994, South African photography has exploded from the grip of censorship onto the world stage. A key figure in this movement is Zwelethu Mthethwa, whose portraits powerfully frame black South Africans as dignified and defiant individuals, even under the duress of social and economic hardship. Photographing in urban and rural industrial landscapes, Mthethwa documents a range of aspects in present-day South Africa, from domestic life and the environment to landscape and labor issues. His stunning portraits often portray rural immigrants on the margins of South African cities, revealing the efforts of his subjects to maintain their cultural identities through their choices in clothing, and the decoration of their dwellings. His singular oeuvre challenges traditional conventions of African commercial studio photography and Western documentary work, moving away from the exoticized images that encapsulate what curator Okwui Enwezor describes as ‘afro pessimism.’”
Related: Flak Photo/Aperture Contest, Monograph | Fullscreen Viewing, Okwui Enwezor and Zwelethu Mthethwa Discussion
