Join us for the much-anticipated book launch of Somnyama Ngonyama/Hail the Dark Lioness!
More than 10 curators, poets and authors offer written contributions that draw out the layers of meaning and possible readings to accompany select images. Powerfully arresting, this collection is as much a manifesto of resistance as it is an autobiographical, artistic statement.
Somnyama Ngonyama includes 100 self-portraits created by one of the most powerful visual activists of our time. In each of the images, Zanele Muholi drafts material props from her immediate environment in an effort to reflect on her journey, explore her own image and possibilities as a black woman in today’s global society.
Zanele Muholi’s work aims to establish an archive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) individuals, to re-write a black queer and trans visual history of South Africa for the world to know of our resistance and existence at the height of hate crimes in SA and beyond.
Both a visual artist and activist, Muholi co-founded the Forum for Empowerment of Women (FEW) in 2002 and founded Inkanyiso in 2009, an online forum for queer visual media.
Muholi continues to train and co-facilitate photography workshops for young queer individuals living in townships in order to empower them to document their lives, particularly black Africans where homophobia on the continent is perpetuated by the myth that homosexuality is traditionally ‘unAfrican’. Muholi’s subjects live in townships where the stigma of homosexuality can often lead to rape, violence, and murder.
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