Sign in with Google
Sign in with email
“What does it mean to exist in this time? How can individual and cultural trauma be recognised and transcended? In what ways can art serve as a catalyst for discussion of, education and advocacy for anti-racism, gender expression and reproductive health?”
These are some enquiries embodied by the works (mostly self-portraits) encompassing ZANELE MUHOLI, an eponymously titled exhibition on view at the Los Angeles location of Southern Guild from May 18 - August 31, 2024. It is presented as a succinct panorama of the artist Zanele Muholi’s creative practice through time and different mediums.
The portraits are aimed at celebrating life as an LGBTQIA and person of colour while empowering others and making space for self-love, remembrance and healing. Apart from being a contemporary artist, Muholi is a humanitarian and an activist born in Umlazi, Durban and currently works between Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town in South Africa.
ZANELE MUHOLI throws light on the photographer’s previously unseen works from Somnyama Ngonyama—the South African artist’s ongoing self-portrait series as well as their new work in bronze sculpture art. Each piece of the series is inseparable from their identity as a person, informed by their ancestral history, personal experiences and individual trauma. The title of the work translated into Hail the Dark Lioness in English, presents as a visual art exploration of the Zulu term Somnyama, meaning Black and Ngonyama, which is both the word for lion and their mother’s family name.
Utilising hotel bed sheets as cloaks, clothesline pins as crowns, toothpaste and Vaseline as lipstick adorning the subjects serve as a document and vision of self-embodiment through the medium. These portraits depict the complex web of relations that define the installation artist, as an individual, a child, a grandchild, a sibling, a lover, a mind, a body and a creative—unrestrained and ever-evolving.
A certain consciousness of biological origin has resulted in the visual artist to create visceral visualisations of their genitalia and reproductive organs. The conflicts and contradictions faced by the artist with gynaecological medicine due to their binary existence underpin the work. Fabricated at a colossal scale, the installation art of glistening bronze casts of their uterus and clitoris are juxtaposed with avatars of themselves in clerical robes—in one, bowing their head in solemn prayer, in another, reclining while stimulating their labia.
With a practice focusing on the inherent complexities of self, place and body politics, the artist and humanitarian expands the discourse surrounding activist art. Through duality, shape-shifting and subjectivity, Muholi’s work has the ability to, at once, look back, stand present and stride forward—conscious of a world that will only continue to provide new obstacles and inequalities to overcome.
ZANELE MUHOLI will be accompanied by the release of an eponymous artist monograph published by Southern Guild, capturing the depth and communal impact of this body of work.
What do you think?