Zanele Muholi and the coming out of Black queer South African communities
rfi.frMEP), Victoria Aresheva, says this is the core of Muholi’s work.“The artist presents themself as a visual activist, their work seeks to give visibility to the LGBTQIA+ community, under-represented in the media and in visual culture,” she told RFI’s Muriel Maalouf.Born in 1972 in Umlazi, a township near Durban, South Africa, Muholi studied at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg and Ryerson University in Toronto.Many of the self-portraits deliberately accentuate their skin colour. “There is no make-up used in any of these photos,” says Muholi, explaining that they altered the contrast in post-production to obtain the effect.Click on the image below to open slideshow:{{ scope.legend }}In exaggerating the darkness of their skin, the artist asserts a form of beauty. “I’m reclaiming my Blackness, which I feel is continuously performed by the privileged other.”“I am Black, therefore I cannot paint my face.
That’s what we can see on social media; white people painting their faces black to imitate us and this is insulting. That’s why I can’t do it because I would be insulting myself,” they explain.Upon closer inspection of the series, the eye is drawn to clothes pegs, scouring brushes, feather dusters and combs that at first look like elegant accessories.For the photographer, it is a way of paying homage to their own mother who was a maid for a wealthy white family for 40 years.
Her meagre salary supported eight members of Zanele's family.“In the self-portraits dedicated to the mother, Muholi wears scouring brushes to represent an 'afro' hairdo.
These are everyday, banal objects used as symbols of how hard Black African women work. In this post-colonial world, they are reduced to doing menial tasks, undervalued by society,”.
