MUHOLI DEDICATES AWARD TO SLAIN LESBIAN

South African lesbian photographer and activist Zanele Muholi has been honoured for her acclaimed photography of the LGBT community.

At a glittering ceremony in Kyalami on Thursday last week, Muholi received a Mbokodo Award in the category of “creative photography”.

The Mbokodo Awards, now in their second year, celebrate outstanding South African women in the arts.

Muholi competed against fellow photographers Neo Ntsoma and Marlene Neumann in her category.

Muholi accepted the award in honour of “all the women who gave birth to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex children,” reported inkanyiso.org.

She also dedicated the award to Duduzile Zozo, the 26-year-old lesbian woman who was found murdered in Thokoza outside of Johannesburg in late June with a toilet brush rammed into her vagina.

Muholi is internationally recognised for her work documenting the lives of black lesbian women. She was awarded the prestigious Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression award in London in March.

Muholi’s work has been exhibited and screened around the world and has won a number of international awards. In 2009 she was the Ida Ely Rubin Artist-in-Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In 2010, South Africa’s then Arts and Culture Minister Lulu Xingwana famously stormed out of an exhibition featuring Muholi’s photos of lesbian women embracing, describing the images as “pornographic”.