Zanele Muholi is a photographer and self-described “visual activist” who sees her work as a lifetime endeavor aimed at redefining the face of Africa both within and outside the continent, and fighting violence against LGBTI people. Her recent exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum Zanele Muholi: Isibonelo/Evidence is the most comprehensive museum presentation to date of Muholi’s works and features several of the artist’s ongoing projects about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) communities, both in her home country and abroad.
This evening lecture, Muholi will present her work and address black lesbian and gay identities and politics in contemporary South Africa.
Artist Bio:
Zanele Muholi was born in Umlazi, Durban, in 1972, and lives in Johannesburg. She studied photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg. In 2009 she was the Ida Ely Rubin Artist-in-Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Muholi was included in the 2013 Carnegie International and was awarded the Fine Prize for her work in the exhibition. She is a recipient of the Prince Claus Award. Her work is included in the collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Tate Modern, London, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and others. The first part of the Faces and Phases series was published by Prestel in 2010. The whole body of work to date was published by Steidl in 2014. Her solo exhibition, Isibonelo/ Evidence, was on view at the Brooklyn Museum through November 1, 2015.