Somnyama Ngonyama Zanele Muholi
Somnyama Ngonyama Zanele Muholi
SOMNYAMA NGONYAMA ZANELE MUHOLI
‘I can afford to look at myself directly, risk the pain of experiencing who I am not, and learn to savor the sweetness of who I am.’ Audre Lorde, ‘Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger’, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
With the series Somnyama Ngonyama, I have decided to turn the camera on myself. In contrast to my life-long project of documenting members of my black LGBTI community in South Africa and beyond, one in which I normally have the privilege of witnessing participants’ presentation of themselves according to their own self-image, with this new work I have created portraits in which I am both participant and image-maker. Somnyama Ngonyama (meaning ‘Hail, the Dark Lioness’) is an unflinchingly personal approach I have taken as a visual activist to confronting the politics of race and pigment in the photographic archive. It is a statement of self-presentation through portraiture. The entire series also relates to the concept of MaID (‘My Identity’) or, read differently, ‘maid’, the quotidian and demeaning name given to all subservient black women in South Africa.
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Experimenting with different characters and archetypes, I have portrayed myself in highly stylised fashion using the performative and expressive language of theatre. The black face and its details become the focal point, forcing the viewer to question their desire to gaze at images of my black figure. The visual variety depicted in the series references the histories of black and white fashion photography and of black and white portraiture. Each and every photo captured in this series is a commentary on a specific event in South Africa’s political history, from the advent of the mining industry, to the fame or infamy of the ‘Black Madonna’, to the recent massacre of miners at Marikana; from family to society and back again. By exaggerating the darkness of my skin tone, I’m reclaiming my blackness, which I feel is continuously performed by the privileged other. 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. As Audre Lorde so eloquently put it in her poem, ‘A Litany for Survival’: and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive — Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn: Poems
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One of the realities that I face as a South African visual activist is being forced to make a living outside this country. For a project to be wellexecuted I have to live on the road where most of the work in this series was produced – dashing from New York to Florence to Nottingham, then to Oslo and Liverpool, back home for a week in Johannesburg, and then off to Ann Arbor, Detroit and New York – as was the case over the past three months. This shuttling around sometimes make me feel disoriented, disconnected and almost homeless. The culturally dominant images of black women start to infiltrate my soul and function as a constant reminder that such images still inform how black women are perceived here and now. One way that I deal with this exoticised self/ other is to exorcise those images through my photography. These self-portraits have been captured in different continents: America, Africa and Europe; in the cities of Amsterdam, Charlottesville, Oslo, Umbria, Syracuse, New York, Malmo, Gothenburg, Johannesburg, Paris, Durban, London, Mayotte, Florence and Gaborone. My aim is to mark memories and connections I made with those places and through my interactions with people there. I created materials and used found objects that expressed my moods. All the materials utilised in the portraits have their own primary functions. I focused on senses such as hands touching and eyes penetrating (unsettling eye contact) while producing the work. In Somnyama Ngonyama, I have embarked on a discomforting selfdefining journey, rethinking the culture of the selfie, self-representation and self-expression. I have investigated how photographers can question and deal with the body as material or mix it with objects to further aestheticise black personhood. My abiding concern is, can photographers look at themselves and question who they are in society and the position/s that they hold, and maintain these roles thereafter?
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Bester I, Mayotte, 2015
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Previous spread
Somandla, Parktown, 2014
Opposite
Vukani II, Paris, 2014
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Thulani II, Parktown, 2015
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MaID, Brooklyn, New York, 2015
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Zibuyile I, Syracuse, 2015
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Zandile, Umbria, 2012
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Thembeka I, New York Upstate, 2015
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Muholi Muholi, Amsterdam, 2014
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Somnyama I, Paris, 2014
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Bester II, Paris, 2014
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Inkanyiso I, Paris, 2014
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Somnyama III, Paris, 2014
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Zodwa I, Amsterdam, 2015
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Ntomb’zane Mayotte, 2015
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Somnyama Ngonyama II, Oslo, 2015
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Previous spread left
Hlengiwe, Paris, 2014 Previous spread right
Thembitshe, Parktown, 2014
Opposite
Bona, Charlottesville, 2015
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Mfana, London, 2014
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Bester IV, Mayotte, 2015
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Zodwa, Paris, 2014
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Musa, London, 2015
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MaID I, Syracuse, 2015
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MaID IV, Syracuse, 2015
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Ntombizane I, New York City, 2015
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Ndivile II, Malmo, 2014
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Somnyama IV, Oslo, 2015
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Zibuyile, Parktown, 2014
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Babhekile II, Oslo, 2015
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Thembeka II, London, 2014
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Ntombi I, Paris, 2014
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Ntombi II, Paris, 2014
Thulani I, Paris, 2014
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Vukani I, Paris, 2014
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Bester V, Mayotte, 2015
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Tribute to Brenda Fassie, Cape Town, 2012
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Phindile I, Paris, 2014
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Selected self-portraits 2005-14
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Isibuko I, 2005
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Not butch, but my legs are, 2005
Self, 2005
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Status unknown, 2005
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Untitled, 2006
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Untitled, 2006
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Miss Lesbian I, Amsterdam, 2009
Miss Lesbian V, Amsterdam, 2009
Miss Lesbian III, Amsterdam, 2009
Miss Lesbian VII, Amsterdam, 2009
Zanele Muholi, Vredehoek, Cape Town, 2012 From the Faces and Phases series
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ZaVa, Amsterdam, 2014
Visual activist Zanele Muholi was born in 1972 in Umlazi township in Durban, South Africa; she lives in Johannesburg. Prior to her photographic journeys into black female sexualities and genders in Africa, she worked as a human/lesbian rights activist, raising the many issues facing black lesbian women in South Africa. She worked as a reporter and photographer for Behind the Mask, an LGBTI website, and in 2002 she co-founded the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), a black lesbian organisation based in Gauteng, dedicated to providing a safe space for women loving women to meet and organise. In 2009 she founded Inkanyiso, an organisation that deals with visual arts, activism, media and advocacy. Muholi completed an advanced photography course at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg, in 2003, and held her first solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004. She graduated from Ryerson University in Toronto with an MFA: Documentary Media in 2009, her thesis mapping the visual history of black lesbian identity and politics in post-apartheid South Africa. She has won a number of prestigious awards for her work including a Jean-Paul Blachère award and the Casa Africa award for best female photographer living in Africa at the 2009 Rencontres de Bamako African Photography Biennial; the Index on Censorship – Freedom of Expression arts award (2013); the Fine Prize for an emerging artist at the 2013 Carnegie International; and a Prince Claus Award (2013).
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Muholi’s work has featured on important exhibitions including the 55th Venice Biennale, Documenta 13, the 29th São Paulo Biennial, Les Rencontres d’Arles, France, and Les Rencontres de Bamako, Mali, and at institutions including the V&A Museum, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Huis Marseille, Amsterdam; Schwules Museum, Berlin; Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg; the Walther Collection, Ulm; Menil Collection, Houston; and Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, Italy. Four books have been published on her work: Faces and Phases 2006-14 (Steidl and The Walther Collection, 2014); Zanele Muholi: African Women Photographers #1 (Casa Africa/La Fábrica, 2011); Faces and Phases (Prestel, 2010); Only Half the Picture (Stevenson, 2006). Her awardwinning documentary Difficult Love (2010) has shown at film festivals around the world.
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Artist’s aknowledgments Ellen Eisenman, Lerato Dumse and Valérie Thomas
© 2015 for works by Zanele Muholi, the artist
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