This was quite an interesting meeting. The most humble being I have ever met – inspiring and presence of great power and insight. I met Zanele for a chat at her home in JHB where we discussed the evolution of LGBT rights and activism. She kept asking me if I knew of various publications, activists, Audre Lorde, poets and writers. I thought I knew many things about this community but it turned out there is much I still had to learn and I have shelves of books to read –a beautiful mind is Zanele Muholi.
Zanele Muholi is a visual activist born in Umlazi, Durban and currently lives in Johannesburg. Prior to her photographic journeys into black female sexualities and genders in Africa, she worked as a human/lesbian rights activist with members in her community, raising the many issues facing black lesbian women living in South Africa today.
She worked as a reporter and photographer for Behind the Mask (www.mask.org.za), an LGBTI website, bearing witness to countless acts of violent hate crimes against many of her friends and community members. She later researched and documented early cases of hate crimes.
In 2002, she co- founded the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW,www.few.org.za), a black lesbian organization based in Gauteng, dedicated to providing a safe space for women loving women to meet and organize. She then spent more than three years researching and documenting hate crimes in order to bring the realities of ‘curative rape’, assault, HIV and brutal murders of black lesbians to public attention. In 2009 founded Inkanyiso productions, an organization that deals with Visual Arts/ Activism, Media & Advocacy.
Muholi completed an Advanced Photography course at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown in 2003, and held her first solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004. Between 2007 and 2009, she studied for her MFA in Documentary Media at Ryerson University in Toronto, producing a thesis that maps the visual history of black lesbian identity and politics in post-apartheid South Africa. In 2009, she received a Fanny Ann Eddy accolade from IRN-Africa for outstanding contributions to the study and advocacy of sexualities in Africa. Also in 2009 Muholi was a Jean-Paul Blachère award-winner at the Rencontres de Bamako, African Photography Biennial, also winning the Casa Africa award for best female photographer living in Africa. Two books have been published on her work: Only Half the Picture (2006) and Faces & Phases (2010).
Muholi’s work has featured on numerous exhibitions including the recent DOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel, Germany (9 June - 19 Sept. 2012); 29th São Paulo Biennial, Brazil (2010); Figures and Fictions: Contemporary South African photography at the V&A Museum, London (2011); Face of Our Time II at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2011); Appropriated Landscapes at the Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm/Burlafingen, Germany (2011); and Lesbians Seeing Lesbians at the Leslie/Lohman Gallery in New York (2011).
Her award-winning documentary Difficult Love (2010) has shown at various international film festivals and since won 9 awards. Amongst others, it was screened at Out In Africa LGBT film festival, South Africa; InsideOUT film festival, Toronto; CinemAfrica Film Festival, Sweden; the 26th Gay/Lesbian Film Festival, Torino, Italy; Afrykamera film festival, Poland; the Stockholm Pride festival, Sweden; the film festival of Douarnenez, France; Africa in the Picture film festival, Amsterdam; and Side by Side film festival, St Petersburg, Russia.
Winner of several different prizes, amongst them:
- 8th Bilbao, Zinegoak’s Lesbianism and Genre Award granted by the Equality, Cooperation and Citizenship Area of the Council of Bilbao in Spain, January 2011
- Second award from the “CINHOMO”, the Valladolid LGBT Film Festival Spain, April 2011.
- Best short film (less then 60 min.) at Africa In The Picture Film Festival, Amsterdam, October 2011
- Best Documentary at the Durban Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.
- Best Audience award at Reeling 30: The Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival . US. (2011)
- Audience award at IFEMA - International Female Film Festival Malmö, Sweden. 2012
- Audience award at the London Lesbian & Gay film festival (LLGFF), London (2012)
- Best Jury award at Some Prefer Cake lesbian film festival, Italy (2012)
Muholi has contributed her photography to many queer and art publications and academic journals.
Her publications are:
• Zanele Muholi: African Women Photographers #1 (2011)
• Faces and Phases (2010)
• Only half the picture (2006)
At the end of our long conversation I left with a sense of belonging. I felt as a lesbian I have a HISTORY – there are people who have existed before me and there will be people who will continue to do so even after I no longer am of this world. Zanele made me aware of the huge responsibility that lay in my hands as an ordinary citizen of this country who is “queer”. It is because of people like her that we will be able to trace the journeys of our history and be able to create places for those who come after to be safe and free. Zanele gave me a gift – a book by Sindiwe Magona entitled “Please take Photographs”. One of the lines she shared from the book was this “For centuries, others have written about us. I write to change that instead of moaning about it.” Through lenses she has chosen to speak up for all of us who are unable to do so.
Zanele Muholi – Qhawe lama Qhawe!
(Source for bio: Zanele Muholi 11 February 2013 )
Kutlwano Khali
Zanele Muholi - Visual Activist “For centuries, others have written about us. I write to change that instead of moaning about it.” Through lenses she has chosen to speak up for all of us who are unable to do so.
Crime Scene with Antoine Tempe http://www.stevenson.info/exhibitions/muholi/index2012/crime_scene1.html