About this Event
Black Curatorial and Artist As First Responder presents an intimate (BLACK ONLY) walkthrough of the exhibition Somnyama Ngonyama with artist Zanele Muholi.
About the Exhibition & Artist
Zanele Muholi is one of the most acclaimed photographers working today, and their work has been exhibited all over the world. With over 260 photographs, this major exhibition presents the full breadth of their career to date.
Muholi describes themself as a visual activist. From the early 2000s, they have documented and celebrated the lives of South Africa’s Black lesbian, gay, trans, queer and intersex communities.
In the early series Only Half the Picture, Muholi captures moments of love and intimacy as well as intense images alluding to traumatic events – despite the equality promised by South Africa’s 1996 constitution, its LGBTQIA+ community remains a target for violence and prejudice. In Faces and Phases each participant looks directly at the camera, challenging the viewer to hold their gaze. These images and the accompanying testimonies form a growing archive of a community of people who are risking their lives by living authentically in the face of oppression and discrimination.
Other key series of works include Brave Beauties, which celebrates empowered non-binary people and trans women, and Being, a series of tender images of couples which challenge stereotypes and taboos. Muholi turns the camera on themself in the ongoing series Somnyama Ngonyama – translated as ‘Hail the Dark Lioness’. These striking, reflective images explore themes including labour, racism, Eurocentrism, and sexual politics.
"Somnyama Ngonyama is an unflinchingly personal approach I have taken as a visual activist to confronting the politics of race and pigment in the photographic archive. It is a statement of self-presentation through portraiture. The entire series also relates to the concept of MaID (‘My Identity’) or, read differently, ‘maid’, the quotidian and demeaning name given to all subservient black women in South Africa.
Experimenting with different characters and archetypes, I have portrayed myself in highly stylised fashion using the performative and expressive language of theatre. The black face and its details become the focal point, forcing the viewer to question their desire to gaze at images of my black figure." - Zanele Muholi
Don't miss this special and intimate tour of Zanele's magnificent exhibition at Tate Modern.
About Artist As First Responder
Artist As First Responder (AAFR) is a 6-point cultural and interactive platform that acknowledges, engages, and supports Black, Indigenous, and other Artists of Color whose creative practices heal communities and save lives, founded by Artist, Curator, and Cultural Theologian Ashara Ekundayo. AAFR supports cultural leaders through exhibitions, artist residencies, public forums, site-specific ceremonies, archive development, and publications.
Ashara Ekundayo is a queer, Black feminist interdisciplinary independent curator, visual maker, cultural theologian, arts organizer, and consultant whose creative practice is rooted in joy-informed pedagogies and the study of and creation of Black spaces and archives, site-responsive ceremony, and artist-based strategies such as photography, screenprinting, zine-design, installation, and altar-making that illuminate the specific expertise of Black womxn of the African Diaspora. She is the founder of the philanthropic organization Artist As First Responder, co-founder of Black [Space] Residency, and director of The Black Curators Lab—both studio-based artist residencies celebrating the dynamic imagination of Black creatives. Currently Ashara is editing an art book titled BLATANT Love culled from the more than 33 interviews with Black femme visual artists she conducted from 2020-2022. She lives and works between the San Francisco Bay Area and her hometown of Detroit, MI.
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This event is a black only event with limited capacity. Follow us @black.curatorial on instagram for updates.
This is a Black only space. For those of African-Caribbean heritage or of Mixed Black heritage who identify as Black. No Political Blackness inna dis, No homophobia/transphobia/queerphobia, No islamophobia, anti-semitism or sexism tolerated - you will be kicked out.
Image Credit: Zanele Muholi
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Tate Modern, Bankside, London, United Kingdom
GBP 13.70
