For Zanele Muholi, his story is above all collective “It’s not me who counts. I am only a messenger. » For twenty years, the “visual activist” from South Africa, who defines himself as non-binary, has made it his mission to show the black LGBTQIA + community, and in doing so has carved out a place for himself in the world. ‘contemporary art. Her strong images are only one facet of her activism – in South Africa, the artist has created a mutual aid association for lesbians and a media outlet to disseminate images of her community. “I don’t want there to be a separation between my different realities, says Zanele Muholi. And I don’t direct the people I photograph. Because I am one of them. »
In two hundred photographs, plus paintings, videos and educational documents, the exhibition scans all of his work, which began with documentary images, on the life of suffering of the LGBT community in South Africa. You have to read the texts to take the measure of what people who deviate from the norm are exposed to in a country where homosexuality is still often perceived as a colonial heritage. Series Only Half the Picture modestly shows victims of “corrective” rape inflicted on lesbians to “cure” them of their homosexuality.
queer beauty pageant
But the images of Zanele Muholi, who learned photography at the Market Photo Workshop, founded by photographer David Goldblatt, also know how to move away from the news to focus on a deeper quest: the creation of a visual representation for individuals on the margins, far from society’s radars and the canons of classical beauty. Zanele Muholi thus inscribes his community in history and in the public space, by having his models pose in historic places in South Africa.
Series Brave Beauties features contestants of queer beauty pageants, whose proud pose is a revenge on both aesthetic standards and the country’s history – these contests have long excluded black people. The very nice series Faces and Phases, Zanele Muholi’s large visual archive, is a gallery of photos of queer people, taken in South Africa and elsewhere, and spans an entire room. The artist chose serious poses, in the tradition of the black and white photographic portrait: “I use a film camera and natural light. I just want classic, timeless images. To say that we have always been there. »
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