It has been a minute since my last post on this blog but the wait will have been worth it 🙂

Last weekend I went to the Tate Modern to see the work of Zanele Muholi. If I have to sum up this exhibition in one word, that would be “powerful”. Of course there are many other adjectives that I could I use to describe it, but that is the one that stands out for me.

“Zanele Muholi is a South African visual activist [not artist or photographer, but activist] whose pronouns are they/them/theirs. Their work tells the stories of Black LGBTQIA+ lives in South Africa and beyond.” (Tate Modern exhibition booklet introduction text) and my additional wording in square brackets. They use both black and white, and colour photography to share the experiences of their subjects and also turns the camera on themselves with an extensive array of self portraits where the ‘blackness’ of their skin is paramount… in many ways it reminded me on someone soaked in oil.

The exhibition covered 9 rooms in total, the last one being more focused on the history of South Africa. Each room providing an insight into the lives of their subjects. Room 1 hits you with a force as it deals with survivors of hate crimes from those who live in South Africa’s townships. You have to engage from the outset with images that depict implicitly or explicitly the results/outcomes/scars of hate and the resilience of those who have been subjected to this, rising above those incidents.

One of my favourite rooms was no.3 entitled ‘Queering the public space’, in particular because of use of colour photography for most of the portraits. Maybe it was because it was a sunny day outside, that made me connect with the brightness of the photography in this room. It felt uplifting and joyous as well as being rebellious. Room 6 was faces and phases and had air of the portrait photography of Thomas Ruff but with the addition of transition, politics personal expression and personal ‘freedom’.

Room 8 is where they engaged in self-portraiture and I was truly inspired by what I saw. Maybe some of it was reminiscent of the work of Kara Walker (another visual activist, I would say) that made me really connect on a number of levels with the work in this room, from the pure creativity of the portraits (on a base level), to the techniques used (increasing the contrast to ‘reclaim their blackness’), to the explicit messaging and stories that they are telling. It made me want to go back home and experiment with self portrait photography in a way that I have never really wanted to before (so I need to clear a small space for and reestablish the home studio).

Of course I bought the exhibition book, not yet opened it and I’m thinking of saving that for when I can go on holiday, to really immerse myself without distraction in their work. It’s a shame that I booked to go on the last day of the exhibition because this is one I could have seen at least 3 times over and still discover something new.

All images © Zanele Muholi