30 Arts & Culture
mojatu .com
ZANELE MUHOLI: SOMNYAMA NGONYAMA, HAIL THE DARK
LIONESS – By Ashleigh Boadi & Angela Wathoni
Zanele Muholi is a South African visual
activist and photographer who was
born in Umlazi, Durban and spent
her life living in Johannesburg. She
studied Advanced Photography in
Johannesburg and completed an
MFA: Documentary Media at Ryerson
University which is in Toronto (2009).
In 2013, she also became an Honorary
Professor at the University of Arts
in Germany. Muholi co-founded the
Forum for Empowerment of Women
(FEW) in 2002. This was an organisation
which provided a safe place for black
lesbian women to meet and socialize.
She combines her love for art and her
passion for addressing social injustice
to enlighten people about LGBTQ
rights universally. Her work is usually
dedicated to increasing the exposure
of the black LGBTQI community and
she also aims to document the African
LGBTQI community so that future
generation will have something to
refer to.
In 2009, Muholi founded Inkanyiso which is a non-
profit organisation which utilized visual activism and
advocated on behalf of the LGBTQI community. Her first
solo exhibition in London presented her continuous
self-portrait series Somnyama Ngonyama in over 60
photographs which embodies different characters.
Somnyama Ngonyama translates into English as:
Hail, the Dark Lioness and Muholi uses her body as a
canvas to confront race and the representation of black
women in the media.
Muholi’s portraits are very direct when it comes
to addressing human rights, social justice and the
representation of the black body. She deliberately
exaggerates the stereotypes and degrading attempts
that have been made to represent the black body but
Muholi stated that she is “Reclaiming [her] blackness,
which [she feels] is continuously performed by the
privileged other.” Additionally, she transforms ordinary,
everyday objects into dramatic aesthetically pleasing
props without discounting the prominent topic of
politics in her portraits. Objects like rubber tyres, safety
pins and protective goggles demonstrate different forms
of exploitation and social brutality. Furthermore, objects
like scouring pads and latex gloves highlight themes of
gender identity and sexual politics. She astutely uses
materials like plastic to emphasise environmental issues
such as excess waste and global warming.
Somnyama Ngonyama uses classical paintings, fashion
photography and integrates this with contemporary
identity politics. Muholi gives herself a darker
complexion in her portraits in the aim to articulate the
intricate representations of beauty and desire within
society today. She affirms her cultural identity on her
own terms as being black, female, queer and African.
She proudly states: “My reality is that I do not mimic
being black; it is my skin, and the experience of
being black is deeply entrenched in me. Just like our
ancestors, we live as black people 365 days a year, and
we should speak without fear.”
‘Somnyama Ngonyama presents a compelling and
visionary mosaic of identities, an exquisite empire of
selves. Inviting us into a multi-layered conversation,
each photograph in the series, each visual inscription,
each confrontational narrative depicts a self in profound
dialogue with countless others: implicitly gendered,
culturally complex and historically grounded black
bodies.’ – Renée Mussai, Exhibition Curator
http://autograph-abp.co.uk/exhibitions/zanele-muholi