Zanele Muholi
Tate Modern (London), Jun/24 – Jan/25
A major survey of the work of South African artist and activist Zanele Muholi, the exhibition at London’s Tate Modern offers a glimpse into their vast body of work and encapsulates the range of their artistic practice. Muholi’s photography and filmmaking are deeply entangled with the stories of Black LGBTQIA+ lives. Born in 1972 in the township community of Umlazi amid the South African apartheid regime, their work is highly informed by activism and speaks to issues of injustice, discrimination, and social change.
The retrospective at Tate departs from Muholi’s early photographs, taken in the early 2000s, to more recent works. It traces a genealogy of subjects and past encounters while remaining extremely urgent to the present.
The iconic 2019 self-portrait Qiniso, The Sails, Durban is a poignant image that exudes a strong and exuberant profile that accounts for a powerful depiction of the artist. Careful viewing of the piece shows that the elongated hair, arranged in a majestic, quasi-Egyptian style, holds several afro combs, revealing the political nature that permeates Muholi’s practice. Symbol of the civil rights movement in the 1970s, the afro comb spans centuries of history, dating back to Ancient Egypt. Here, I borrow the famous passage ‘The personal is political’ from the 1969 essay by feminist activist Carol Hanisch to refer to Muholi’s approach to questions of narrative, race, gender, and queerness.
In the first gallery room, the 2002-2006 series of photographs Only Half the Picture documents crime survivors in South Africa. These portraits witness histories of resilience, gravitating toward the violent traces and memories pervading the bodies of the victims. However, several images also reflect on moments of intimacy and tenderness, and Muholi’s gentle but vulnerable portrayal is a thoughtful political act, restoring their agency.
The exhibition goes on, and representations of queerness resonate with Muholi’s subjectivity and activism. Featuring photographs of trans, gay, and gender non-conforming people taken in various locations across South Africa, these works engage in a dialogue with the social fabric of the country and challenge dominant ways of inhabiting the space and its prevailing norms. By protecting the colour of these photographs, Muholi reproduces their present condition and creates a vibrant, celebratory account.
The final galleries explore the issue of the gaze and expand on Muholi’s understanding and framing of the self, with a conscious and attentive portraiture that appears to look back at the viewer. Jula I, Wild Coast (2020) and Zazi II, ISGM, Boston (2019) are emblematic examples. Apart from its mechanical use, the camera is now employed as a tool to question Western conventions of photography and imagery, which have traditionally portrayed Black subjects through an exoticizing lens. Muholi’s self-portraits use different materials and objects that allude to South African history and African cultures alongside a dramatic black-and-white ambiance, confronting narratives and radiating strength. Throughout this extensive photographic archive, personal stories and wounds are told, pictured, and reinvented. In Zanele Muholi’s pictorial world, the personal is truly political.
Caroline Fucci for London Art Walk
August 2024