Zanele Muholi presents ‘Faces and Phases’ , an exhibition of over 260 photographs presenting the full breadth of their career to date. As a visual activist, Muholi has documented and celebrated the lives of South Africa’s Black lesbian, gay, trans, queer and intersex communities since the early 2000s. In an earlier series titled ‘Only Half the Picture’, Muholi captures moments of love and intimacy as well as intense images alluding to traumatic events inflicted on the LGBTQIA+ community, which remains a target for violence and prejudice despite the equality promised by South Africa’s 1996 constitution. In ‘Faces and Phases’, each participant looks directly at the camera, challenging the viewer to hold their gaze. These images and the accompanying testimonies form a growing archive of a community of people who are risking their lives by living authentically in the face of oppression and discrimination.
Other key series of works include ‘Brave Beauties’, which celebrates empowered non-binary people and trans women, and ‘Being’, a series of tender images of couples which challenge stereotypes and taboos. Muholi turns the camera on themself in the ongoing series ‘Somnyama Ngonyama’ – translated as ‘Hail the Dark Lioness’ to confront the politics of race and pigment in the photographic archive. These striking, reflective images explore themes including labour, racism, Eurocentrism and sexual politics. Muholi’s ‘Faces and Phases’ is an ongoing gelatin silver print portraiture series which begun in 2006 and reflects the artist’s mission to uplift Black queer South African communities. The viewer is invited to contemplate questions such as: What does an African lesbian look like? Is there a lesbian aesthetic or do we express our gendered, racialised and classed selves in rich and diverse ways? By portraying queer subjects in an ongoing, positive relationship to their own agency and visibility over time, ‘Faces and Phases’ records resilience amid the violence and oppression experienced by many Black queer individuals in South Africa, and offers a testament to the rich diversity of Black queer life.
This exhibition is inspired by the 18th century botany pictures which show several plants plucked from their natural habitat, thus erasing any cultural or social context. This practice highlights the Western discovery of an object and does not acknowledge its long-lasting existence. In this project, Muholi uses this history and likens it to depicting the LGBTIA+ community in South Africa. While there is a drastic increase in the national representation of black queer individuals, the artist feels that it is still an erasure of crucial context. With this in mind, these individuals are depicted in the same way as the botanical imageries. There is an upsurge in visibility in Western consumption, but no focus is accorded to the misery and systematic subjugation these individuals face in post-apartheid in South Africa. ‘Faces and Phases’ is at Tate Modern Natalie Bell Building, Level 3 in Bankside, London and will be on view until the 26th of January 2025.
