It was a great year, maybe one of the best ever, for direct action in-the-streets in-your-face pro-democracy movements, and they were largely pushed and pulled by women. Starting with Tunisia, food uprisings spread quickly to Egypt, Algeria, and elsewhere across the continent. Sometimes, big men were pushed out.
‘Lesbians Seeing Lesbians’
September 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The South African photographer Zanele Muholi is exhibiting some of her work–at the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation (26 Wooster Street) as part of an exhibition of contemporary photographers, “Lesbians Seeing Lesbians: Building Community in Early Feminist Photography” Here’s a link to the catalog essay. The exhibition, which opened earlier this month, is on till October 22.
‘Contemporary South African Photography’
April 3, 2011 By 1 Comment
A short video profile of the Johannesburg photographer, Sabelo Mlangeni, one of 17 South African photographers in “Figures & Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography“, showing from 12 April through 17 July this year at the Victoria and Alfred Museum’s Porter Gallery in London. It features work by photographers living and working in South Africa now.
The profiles were shot by the Museum. The one below is of Cape Town artists and brothers Husain and Hassan Essop:
African women’s visual narratives
March 14, 2011 By 1 Comment
If you’re in London, “Reflections on the Self ,” an exhibition of “African women’s visual narratives, as told through self-portraits and portraits of other women,” will be at the Royal Festival Hall till April 4th. It features the work of photographers Hélène Amouzou (Togo; lives and works Belgium); Majida Khattari(Morocco; lives and works France); Zanele Muholi (South Africa); Senayt Samuel(Eritrea, lives and works in the UK; image above); and Nontsikelelo Veleko (South Africa).The curator is Christine Eyene (references: Gwanza, Month of Photography 2011 in Zimbabwe as well as African section of Photoquai 2011 at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, France).
Via Christine Eyene
Mary Sibande
December 17, 2010 By 2 Comments
The Johannesburg-based artist Mary Sibande who creates life-size sculptures of black women in brightly coloured and elaborate Victorian dresses, is one of two African artists (among 30 plus artists worldwide) awarded the Civitella Ranieri Foundation fellowships “… which every year brings several dozen visual artists, musicians, writers, poets and other creative types for six-week-long fellowships in the fifteenth-century Civitella Ranieri castle in Umbria.” The other is photographer Zanele Muholi.
Black Diamonds
December 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Art dealer Michael Stevenson’s 15th annual Summer Exhibition (at the MS Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa) comprises five solo shows, by artists Anton Kannemeyer, Viviane Sassen, Claudette Schreuders, Serge Alain Nitegeka and Hylton Nel:
The exhibition also features a single, topical photograph by Zanele Muholi. In October 2010 the Black Empowerment businessman Kenny Kunene [above] spent R700 000 on his 40th birthday party at the ZAR Lounge nightclub in Johannesburg, which he owns. According to reports, his party featured models, who were painted grey, strutting around in lingerie; another model was draped across a table, and party-goers nibbled sushi served on her stomach. (…) In response to this event, Muholi has photographed herself as one of the models. She has titled the work ‘I am just doing my job’, which was the answer one of the models offered when questioned after the event.
See Muholi’s comment on the shenanigans of the black diamonds (how the black millionaires are known) here.
Source: The South African Art Times.
L’Expo Photo
December 6, 2010 By 1 Comment
The French Fondation Blachère has chosen to feature the work of African photographers Nestor Da, Baldwin Mouanda, François-Xavier Gbré, Zanele Muholi (that’s one of her images above), Mohamed Bourouissa and Uche Iroha-Okpa at the 8th African Photography Encounters in Bamako on the theme of “Frontiers. The work will be exhibited until April 30, 2010.
Anybody can be a maid
December 6, 2010 By 8 Comments
By Hlonipha Mokoena
Guest Blogger
Anyone can be a maid. With two hundred rand in your pocket you can transform yourself into a maid. If you take your two hundred rand to your local Pick n’ Pay or Shoprite you can buy a maid’s uniform.
‘Pop Culture Politics’
July 5, 2010 By 1 Comment
Short video profile of 10 South African artists featured in the exhibition “… For Those Who Live In It: Pop Culture Politics and Strong Voices,” in Eindhoven in the Netherlands (till August 17th). According to the organizers “… [t]he generation of young artists now emerging in South-Africa and making a name for itself, is the first generation that has grown up and started it’s own art practice after apartheid. These artists are very aware of this, and are emphatically searching for their own way to express the political and social implications of this in their work. Some of them make bold political statements, sharp satire or choose for outspoken activism. Others consciously keep far from politics, but in the polarized reality of South-Africa even that almost seems like a political choice.”
Homophobia as National Sport
March 22, 2010 By 5 Comments
This may make for depressing reading with your breakfast, but there’s nothing new about the entrenched homophobia in South Africa, a place where men rape lesbians to “correct” them, a government minister last month refused to open a state-funded exhibition featuring photographic images of intimacy between gay women (the image above is an example), and Jacob Zuma, the country’s president, once said that when he was growing up gay men would not have stood in front of him. “I would knock him out.”
