Zanele Muholi
FACES & PHASES
April 28, 2013 – May 11, 2013
Muholi describes her method in ‘Faces & Phases’ as visual activism. ‘Faces’ means herself, photographer and community worker, being face to face with the many lesbians from different townships.
Individuals in this series of photographs hold different positions within the black lesbian community: soccer player, actress, scholar, lawyer, dancer and filmmaker. However, they are merely presented by the media as victims of rape and homophobia. This is the reason for ‘Phases’: their lives are not just what makes the newspapers headlines every time one of them is attacked. Every face has a story, has an identity.
In her series ‘Being’ Muholi points to the woman’s role in African culture: to be a mother and to procreate with a male partner. Every deviation is regarded as a threat and offense against the heterosexual family nucleus and hence is prosecuted sharply. Homosexuality is considered as ‘un-African’. Lesbians who openly express their identity are subject of ‘corrective’ rape in order to erase their male attitude and make them into true women, females, real women, mothers and men’s property.
‘Faces & Phases’ and ‘Being’ show the story, battle and life of black lesbians that in spite of their experiences have not given up.
Zanele Muholi (*1972 in Umlazi, Durban) lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. She completed her studies at Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg and at Ryerson University, Toronto with a Master of Fine Arts. She is founding member of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), a black lesbian organisation based in Gauteng. She was the recipient of the 2005 Tollman Award for the Visual Arts, the 2006 BHP Billiton/Wits University Visual Arts Fellowship and she was the 2009 Ida Ely Rubin Artist-in-Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2010 her ‘Faces & Phases’ series was included on the 29th Sao Paolo Biennale and in 2012 the series was shown on Documenta 13 in Kassel. 2013 she received the Index Award for her courageous and powerful action on freedom of expression.
Individuals in this series of photographs hold different positions within the black lesbian community: soccer player, actress, scholar, lawyer, dancer and filmmaker. However, they are merely presented by the media as victims of rape and homophobia. This is the reason for ‘Phases’: their lives are not just what makes the newspapers headlines every time one of them is attacked. Every face has a story, has an identity.
In her series ‘Being’ Muholi points to the woman’s role in African culture: to be a mother and to procreate with a male partner. Every deviation is regarded as a threat and offense against the heterosexual family nucleus and hence is prosecuted sharply. Homosexuality is considered as ‘un-African’. Lesbians who openly express their identity are subject of ‘corrective’ rape in order to erase their male attitude and make them into true women, females, real women, mothers and men’s property.
‘Faces & Phases’ and ‘Being’ show the story, battle and life of black lesbians that in spite of their experiences have not given up.
Zanele Muholi (*1972 in Umlazi, Durban) lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. She completed her studies at Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg and at Ryerson University, Toronto with a Master of Fine Arts. She is founding member of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), a black lesbian organisation based in Gauteng. She was the recipient of the 2005 Tollman Award for the Visual Arts, the 2006 BHP Billiton/Wits University Visual Arts Fellowship and she was the 2009 Ida Ely Rubin Artist-in-Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2010 her ‘Faces & Phases’ series was included on the 29th Sao Paolo Biennale and in 2012 the series was shown on Documenta 13 in Kassel. 2013 she received the Index Award for her courageous and powerful action on freedom of expression.
