Zanele Muholi
South Africa
B. 1972
Zanele Muholi is a visual activist, humanitarian and art practitioner who focuses on the documentation and celebration of the lives of South Africa’s Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex communities.
Born in Umlazi, Durban and now residing in Cape Town, Muholi currently works between Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town. Between 2001 and 2003, they studied Advanced Photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg.
They received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Liège in Belgium (2023), was appointed Honorary Professor of video and photography at the University of the Arts/Hochschule für Künste in Bremen, Germany (2013), and completed an MFA in Documentary Media at Ryerson University, Toronto (2009).
Beginning in 2006, Muholi responded to the continuing discrimination and violence faced by the LGBTQIA+ community by photographing Black lesbian and transgender individuals, resulting in the ongoing portrait project, Faces and Phases. The more recent series Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness), also ongoing, shifts the lens with Muholi becoming both participant and image-maker.
Muholi is deeply invested in educational activism, community outreach and youth development. In 2021, they set up the Muholi Arts Institute (MAI) in Cape Town, which focuses on art education, following on from the founding of the Forum for Empowerment of Women in 2002 and Inkanyiso, an online forum for queer and visual media, in 2009. They facilitate access to art spaces for youth practitioners through projects such as Ikhono LaseNatali and continue to provide photography workshops for young women and in the townships through PhotoXP.
Muholi has been the recipient of multiple international awards and accolades, including France’s Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2017), Lucie Award for Humanitarian Photography (2019), Royal Photographic Society fellowship (2018) and Prince Claus Award (2013), among others.
Solo exhibitions of Muholi’s work have taken place at institutions including Tate Modern (2024 and 2020), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2024), Maison Européenne de la Photographie (2023), Museo delle Culture Photo (2023), Gropius Bau (2021), Seattle Art Museum (2019), LUMA Westbau (2018), Fotografiska (2018), Stedelijk Museum (2017), Autograph ABP (2017), Brooklyn Museum (2015), among many others.
Their work was featured on the South African Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), at dOCUMENTA 13 (2012) and the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010), and in group exhibitions at major international institutions such as the Guggenheim in New York and Bilbao, Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, The Walther Collection in Ulm, Germany, and Museo Amparo in Mexico, among others.
Book publications include Somnyama Ngonyama: Hail The Dark Lioness (Aperture, 2018), which won the 2019 Best Photography Book Award from the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, and the follow-up Somnyama Ngonyama: Hail The Dark Lioness, Volume II (Aperture, 2024); Zanele Muholi, Faces and Phases 2006-14 (Steidl and The Walther Collection, 2014); Zanele Muholi: African Women Photographers #1 (Casa Africa and La Fábrica, 2011); Faces and Phases (Prestel, 2010); and Only half the picture (Stevenson, 2006).
