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Zanele Muholi Zanele Muholi (Umlazi, Durban SA, 1972) studied photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg, where she now lives. Completing her study in 2003, she held her first solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004. In 2002, she was a founder of the Forum for the Empowerment if Women (FEW), a black lesbian organisation based in Gauteng. Zanele Muholi was employed as a photographer and reporter for Behind the Mask, an online magazine on LGBTI issues in Africa. She was a recipient of the 2005 Tollman Award for the Visual Arts, the first BHP/Billiton/Wits University Visual Arts Fellowship in 2006, and was the 2009 Ida Elly Rubin Artist-in-Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 2009 she was awarded her Master of Fine Arts degree in Documentary Media from Ryerson University in Toronto. Her thesis mapped the visual history of black lesbian identity and politics in post-Apartheid South Africa.[1] She also received an Fanny Ann Eddy accolade from IRN Africa for her outstanding contributions to the study of sexuality in Africa. She also won the Casa Africa award for best female photographer and a Foundation Blach&agravce;re award at Les Rencontres de Bamako biennial of African photography in 2009. In August 2009, Minister of Arts and Culture, Lulu Xingwana walked out of an exhibition that featured Muholi’s photography, calling it immoral, offensive and going against nation-building. In her response Muholi expressed her sentiments by saying; "It's paralysing. I expected people to think before they act, and to ask questions. I wanted to create dialogue". On April 20, Muholi's flat in Vredehoek was robbed, with over 20 primary and back-up external hard drives containing five years' worth of photos and video being stolen with her laptop. Photos contained therein include records of the funerals of three Black South African lesbians murdered in hate crimes. Nothing else was stolen, raising suspicions that Muholi's recordings of Black lesbian life was targeted. Muholi was overseas at the time of the robbery. In 2010 her Faces and Pases series was included in the 29th São Paulo Biennale; the series was published by Prestel and nominated as best photo book of 2010 at the International Photobook Festival in Kassel (Germany). In 2012 the Series was shown at Documenta 12. Since 2009, when Zanele Muholi first presented her Faces and Phases, started in 2006, she has been on a continuous journey to capture and document the faces and challenges the black queer community is confronted with, on a micro family level as in a broader context. Zanele Muholi participated in a couch session at the Antwerp conference. |