Zanele Muholu (CRF 2012) in a round-table discussion with image projections and musical intervals with exhibition curator Renee Mussai.
In more than 80 self-portraits, celebrated visual activist Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972), uses their body as a canvas to confront the deeply personal politics of race and representation in the visual archive. In Somnyama Ngonyama, which translates from isiZulu to ‘Hail The Dark Lioness’, Muholi playfully employs the conventions of classical painting, fashion photography, and the familiar tropes of ethnographic imagery to rearticulate contemporary identity politics. Each black and white self-portrait asks critical questions about social (in)justice, human rights, and contested representations of the Black body.