Arts: Zanele Muholi throws light on margins of South African society

The European House of Photography, in Paris, presents the first retrospective in France devoted to the artist and his strong images on the living conditions of the black community LGBTQIA+.

By Claire Guillot

For Zanele Muholi, his history is above all collective: “It is not I who count. I am only a messenger.” For twenty years, “visual activist” from South Africa, Who defines himself as non -binary, has been for mission to show the black LGBTQIA+community, and in so doing a place of choice in contemporary art. His strong images are only one of the faces of his militancy – in South Africa, the artist has created a mutual aid association for lesbians and a media to disseminate images of his community. “I do not want there to be a separation between my different realities,” says Zanele Muholi. And I do not direct the people I photograph. Because I am one of them. “

In two hundred photographs, more paintings, videos and educational documents, the exhibition sweeps all his work, started by 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 in a country where homosexuality is still often perceived as a colonial heritage is exposed. The Only Half The Picture series shows, with modesty, victims of “corrective” rapes, inflicted on lesbians to “cure” them of their homosexuality.

a queer beauty contest

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 fringes, far from the radars of society and the canons of classical beauty. Zanele Muholi thus inscribes its community in history and in public space, by putting its models in historical places of South Africa.

The Brave Beauties series features participants in queer beauty contests, whose proud installation is a revenge both on aesthetic standards and on the history of the country – these competitions have long excluded black people. The very beautiful series Faces and Phases, a great visual archive of Zanele Muholi, is a gallery of photo of Queer, taken in South Africa and elsewhere, and covers an entire room. The artist has chosen serious poses, in the tradition of black and white photographic portrait: “I use a silver apparatus and natural light. I just want classic images, out of time. To say that we have always been there. “

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/Media reports cited above.