About Zanele Muholi's Ntozakhe II
Women’s rights are facing increased legislation in the United States. This is 1 of 8 pivotal artworks about women’s autonomy and sexuality.
Cover photo: Ntozakhe II, Parktown, photograph, by Zanele Muholi (2016). Courtesy of Art Basel.
Even in this #MeToo era, women’s rights are still under attack. Activists are fighting all over the world, for the LGBT community, Black lives, and women’s control over their own bodies and sexuality. Just recently, 8 states have passed new anti-abortion bills. Here are 8 pivotal artworks about women’s autonomy and sexuality. This is one work of an eight-part series.
WARNING: The following article discusses topics of sex, murder, and rape.
Ntozakhe II, Parktown, photograph, by Zanele Muholi (2016). Courtesy of Art Basel.
Ntozakhe II, Parktown — Zanele Muholi (2016)
Zanele Muholi (1972-Present) is a contemporary South African photographer and self-proclaimed “visual activist.” Muholi creates triumphant portraits, through which the gender-fluid artist documents their local queer community. Muholi is one of few black artists from South Africa to achieve international acclaim.
Portraits, by Zanele Muholi, as featured in the Art/Afrique, le nouvel atelier Exhibition in The Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France (2017). Photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra and courtesy of Flickr.
While South African parliament legalized same-sex marriage in 2006 — the fifth in the world and only African country to do so — hate crimes are common. “We’ve lost so many people to hate crimes… you never know if you’ll see someone again the next day,” Muholi laments. South Africa has one of the world’s highest rates of sexual assault; one in four men admit to have sex with women without consent.
Lesbians are uniquely targeted in a practice called ‘curative’ or ‘corrective rape’ in which men sexually assault queer women in the supposed goal of converting them into heterosexuals.
Muholi uses her camera to document and empower the LGBT community. “I photograph myself to remind myself that [I] exist,” says Muholi. Ntozakhe II, Parktown is one of hundreds of self-portraits by Muholi, part of the series Somnyama Ngonyma, Zulu for “Hail the Dark Lioness.”
Throughout the series, Muholi exaggerates their skin tone in a reclamation of their blackness “which [Muholi feels] is continuously performed by the privileged other.” In post-Apartheid South Africa, this is still a defiant act. Muholi’s skin glistens. Curator Kimberly Drew commends Muholi for the “incredible control over light and color.”
In this photograph Muholi is styled in a way reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty. Clad in a toga with chin slightly tilted and crowned in an assortment of hair donuts, Muholi appears regal. Muholi’s expression is ambiguous, both defiant and vulnerable.
Through her photography, Muholi declares, “You are worthy, you count, nobody has the right to undermine you: because of your being, because of your race, because of your gender expression, because of your sexuality, because of all that you are.”
Zanele Muholi at the Side By Side International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Moscow, Russia (2011). Courtesy of Wikipedia.
While Muholi has received international acclaim, they have faced local opposition. In 2010, South Africa’s minister of arts and culture, Lulu Xingwana, called an exhibition of Muholi’s documenting intimate lesbian couples “immoral, offensive and going against nation-building.” And in 2012, thieves broke into Muholi’s Cape Town apartment and stole over 20 hard drives storing years of photographs.
Muholi co-founded the Forum for the Empowerment of Women and founded Inkanyiso, a media site collective that documents queer life. Two works of Muholi’s are currently on view at the Venice Biennale.
