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ZANELE MUHOLI: MO(U)RNING
Sun, 5 August 2012
The Stevenson gallery in Cape Town is hosting a solo exhibition by acclaimed LGBT visual activist and photographer Zanele Muholi.
For Muholi, MO(U)RNING evokes death but also suggests the cycle of life as morning follows night. Life and death, love and hate are some of the antitheses that appear throughout her work.
In April this year, Muholi's Cape Town apartment was burgled in what was apparently an attack directed at her visual activism.
The lost material was an extensive archive of photographic work, videos and texts documenting hate crimes in South Africa and gender issues in Africa.
Among this material was the 'Queercide' project, created by Muholi to denounce and record hate crimes and atrocities committed against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people.
The loss of this material raised many questions for Muholi. What happen when such images disappear or when a collection of testimonies is erased?
In MO(U)RNING, Muholi presents elements of her documentation that were not lost, together with new work realised in recent months.
The exhibition includes new and recent photographs from her ‘Faces and Phases’ series of portraits and her ‘Being’ series. Her multiple award-winning documentary Difficult Love, currently on view at Documenta 13 together with ‘Faces and Phases’, is screened for the first time at the gallery.
Photographs of crime scenes and new video works also form part of the exhibition.
Muholi's work gives public life to a community, its joys, traumas, fights and daily existence. She uses the power of visual material, offered by photographs and film, to affirm existing realities and expose truths and the cruel aspects of 21st century South African society where loving can be dangerous.
The exhibition runs until 1 September 2012. The Stevenson gallery is open from Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, and Saturday 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. It is located at Buchanan Building, 160 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock, Cape Town.
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