Artist:
Zanele Muholi (South Africa); with a new artist announced each month.
Curators:
Githan Coopoo (South Africa), AKO Foundation Assistant Curator of Costume, Costume Institute, Zeitz MOCAA
Sakhisizwe Gcina (South Africa), AKO Foundation Assistant Curator of Special Projects, Curatorial Lab, Zeitz MOCAA
The Curatorial Lab is a multi-disciplinary space for experimental curatorial practice and research which explores new curatorial methodologies; subversive curatorial approaches; non-prescriptive practices; and under-represented topics and issues.
The Curatorial Lab’s first project investigates the representation of the LGBTQI+ community, in the context of homophobia and the current oppression of gay rights in South Africa. This project strives to promote intercultural understanding regarding a community who have been excluded from society’s predominantly heteronormative culture and discourse. This exhibition promotes education through the arts and develops critical thinking about gender and sexuality.
Zanele Muholi’s Faces & Phases series are not merely black and white portraits, but an intimate portrayal of lives that have been traditionally marginalised. The individuals confronting us have collectively experienced the horrors of homophobia, violence, rape, and murder. Still, they stand proud of who they are and claim their right to be visible. In a society that fails to take responsibility for the vulnerability of the LGBTQI+ community and the threat of their erasure, these portraits and their unyielding gaze commands respect for their humanity and speaks out against the silence of their violation. Muholi’s images confront injustice, celebrate the existence of gay African individuals, and refuse to allow the myth that they are invisible to the eye of history.