The latest image-maker in the “Favorite Photographs” series is South African photographer Kelebogile Ntladi. Based in Johannesburg, Kelebogile uses her images to interrogate gender norms and unapologetically contribute to the establishment of new space for dynamic identities in contemporary South African society. In particular Kelebogile’s work focuses on the idea of androgyny. With an interest […]
On Thursday, July 26, the Michael Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town had an opening: Mo(u)rning. Photographic and other works by Zanele Muholi. Muholi had lost much of her work a couple months earlier in a more than suspicious burglary, and so the exhibition was a meditation on mourning, the processes of receiving and releasing the […]
Charlayne Hunter-Gault, an African-American reporter based in South Africa, has penned a piece in this week’s New Yorker titled “Violated Hopes” (subscription required) that covers the contentious topic of sexual violence directed against black South African lesbians. Hunter-Gault frames the piece on the experiences of lesbian women in townships in Johannesburg and Cape Town, interviewing several women who have experienced sexual violence at the hands of men.
A coincidence? Surely not. At the same time as the Out in Africa festival in South Africa celebrating lesbian and gay film (see earlier post), runs the prestigious London Lesbian and Gay film festival. At this year’s festival, a few films stand out that deal with the problems that African LGBT people face.
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.
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.
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. […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
