Les Rencontres d'Arles Les Rencontres d'Arles : expositions, stage de photographie / exhibitions, workshops photo

My work is a visual exploration of making/mapping/preserving radical black lesbian and queer (LGBTI : lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex) visual history in post-Apartheid South Africa. I explore how visual activism can be employed by socially, culturally, politically and economically marginalized individuals to create sites of resistance as well as to develop a critical gaze from our own perspective.

This portfolio represents four different series produced over several years in various South African townships and beyond. From Beulahs and Transfigures, features Ms D’vine (2007), Martin Machapa (2007), Christina Mavuma & Tinky (2010). These two series briefly distinguish between sexual orientation and gender expression. They help express how trans bodies can claim their space and articulate their gender expression within the homo-queer as well as the heterosexist spheres that tend to exclude the T’s and I’s embedded in the LGBTI acronym.

With the Faces & Phases (2007-2012) series, I intended to show our emerging South African black lesbian aesthetics through portraiture. Positive images of us within women’s and queer archives are almost non-existent. Faces express the persons and Phases signifies the transition from one stage of sexuality or gender expression and experience to another. In Faces & Phases I feature some individuals who are affected and survived lesbophobic attacks. One of our collective painful experiences as a community is the loss of friends and acquaintances through disease and hate crimes.

Homophobia / queerphobia / transphobia / xenophobia and hate crimes have silenced and sanctioned our voices. In Isilumo Siyaluma (2006-2012) I bring attention to the epidemic of hate crimes - ‘curative rapes’ and brutal murders - that has escalated in the past few years in SA, claiming many black lesbian, gay men and trans live in the townships. In this series I drew motifs with my menstrual blood to express the anger and loss of losing friends, acquaintances, lovers and fellow activists through brutal murders.

Zanele Muholi

www.zanelemuholi.com

Zanele Muholi

Courtesy of the artist.

Zanele Muholi

Born in 1972 in Umlazi, Durban, South Africa.

Lives and works in Cape Town.

Muholi worked as a human / lesbian rights activist with members in LGBTI community, raising the many issues facing black lesbian women living in SA. In 2002, she co-founded the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW),

a black lesbian organization based in Gauteng, dedicated to providing a safe space for women loving women to meet and organize. Muholi completed a course at the Market Photo Workshop in 2003. She then studied, between 2007-2009, for her MFA: Documentary Media at Ryerson University in Toronto, producing a thesis that maps the visual history of black lesbian identity and politics in post-apartheid SA. In 2009, received a Fanny Ann Eddy accolade from IRN-Africa for her contributions to the study and advocacy of sexualities in Africa. She was also the Casa Africa at the Rencontres de Bamako, and at the Casa Africa Award for best female photographer living in Africa. Two books have been published on her work: Only Half the Picture (2006) and Faces & Phases (2010).

Atelier de Mécanique

> 23 September

10 am to 8 pm

11 €