Zanele Muholi

(Umlazi, South Africa, 1972 - )

Africa

Zanele Muholi was born in Umlazi, South Africa and currently lives in Johannesburg. They studied Advanced Photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg; a workshop founded by the pioneering South African photographer David Goldblatt. In 2009, Muholi completed their MFA in Documentary Media at Ryerson University, Toronto. Recent solo exhibitions include Somnyama Ngonyama: Hail the Dark Lioness, Center for Visual Art, Denver, CO (2021); Zanele Muholi, Tate Modern, London (2020); Homecoming, Durban Art Gallery, Durban, South Africa (2017); Zanele Muholi, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2017); and Zanele Muholi: Personae, National Underground Railroad, FotoFocus, Freedom Center, Cincinnati, Ohio (2016). Muholi’s work has been included in many group exhibitions, including Crossing Views, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2020); Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now, Guggenheim Museum, NY (2019); In their own form, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (2018); and Not a Single Story, Nirox Sculpture Park, Cape Town, South Africa (2017). Muholi is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York City. “My mission is to re-write a Black queer and trans visual history of South Africa for the world to know of our resistance and existence at the height of hate crimes in South Africa and beyond,” says Muholi, who describes themselves as a visual activist and creates striking photographs that serve as powerful advocacy. Since the early 2000s, Muholi has produced work that highlights bigotry experienced by LGBTQ and Intersex communities in South Africa and the false post-apartheid equality South Africa promotes. Muholi works in a documentary style and engages the Black subject as a keeper of stories whose voices deserve to be heard. By producing documentation of gay, lesbian, trans, and intersex South Africans, Muholi creates an archive that serves as visual history of these marginal communities for future generations.

Gauteng, South Africa

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