Artist and visual activist Zanele Muholi celebrates the lives of South Africa’s Black LGBTI communities in a series of arresting portraits that aim to offset the stigma around queer identity in African society.
Khayalami VII, Milan, Italy 2023
Now, Muholi is exhibiting new bronze sculptures and adding to their self-portrait series, Somnyama Ngonyama (examples from which were shown in New York in 2021, alongside Muholi’s paintings) at their retrospective at Southern Guild, Los Angeles.
Muholi considers their own form in portraits taken all around the world, in new work that gently subverts the quotidian, whether wearing crowns of clothesline pins, bed sheet cloaks or lipstick made from toothpaste and vaseline.
Khayalami II, Room 120 Art Hotel Navigli, Milan, Italy 2023
Ultimately uplifting, Muholi’s work emphasises a new positivity, aiming ‘to rewrite 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’.
The Southern Guild Los Angeles exhibition, ‘Zanele Muholi’, is on until 30 August 2024, southernguild.com
‘Zanele Muholi’ at Tate Modern is on show until 26 January 2025, tate.org.uk
A version of this article appears in the July 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today
-
‘Nothing just because it’s beautiful’: Performance artist Marina Abramović on turning her hand to furniture designMarina Abramović has no qualms about describing her segue into design as a ‘domestication’. But, argues the ‘grandmother of performance art’ as she unveils a collection of chairs, something doesn’t have to be provocative to be meaningful
-
A local’s guide to Los Angeles by defiant artist Fawn RogersOregon-born, LA-based artist Fawn Rogers gives us a personal tour of her adopted city as it hosts its sixth edition of Frieze
-
Shakara is a stylish new addition to London's West African dining sceneShakara, a new Marylebone bar and dining room, adds to the city's ever-more impressive high-end West African dining scene
-
'We need to be constantly reminded of our similarities' – Jonathan Baldock challenges the patriarchal roots of a former Roman temple in LondonThrough use of ceramics and textiles, British artist Jonathan Baldock creates a magical and immersive exhibition at ‘0.1%’ at London's Mithraum Bloomberg Space
-
Discover Rotimi Fani-Kayode's fluid photographs of the queer male body, on show in London‘Rotimi-Fani Kayode: The Studio – Staging Desire’ at Autograph ABP celebrates the work of the Nigerian-born photographer
-
Saatchi Gallery is in full bloom with floral works from Vivienne Westwood, Marimekko, Buccellati and more‘Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art & Culture’ at Saatchi Gallery, London, explores the relationship between creatives and their floral muses, and spans from fashion and jewellery to tattoos
-
'I want to get into these images and perfume them': Linder's retrospective opens at the Hayward Gallery'Linder: Danger Came Smiling' gathers fifty years of the artist's work at the Hayward Gallery. We meet the punk provocateur ahead of her first retrospective
-
Tasneem Sarkez's heady mix of kitsch, Arabic and Americana hits LondonArtist Tasneem Sarkez draws on an eclectic range of references for her debut solo show, 'White-Knuckle' at Rose Easton
-
‘A call to action for more authentic expressions of working-class life’: a London show reframes working-class BritainLondon exhibition ‘Lives Less Ordinary’, at Two Temple Place, challenges age-old stereotypes
-
‘Dr Tetris’ on the biggest ever iteration of the puzzle in LondonTetris comes to 360-degree, 23,000 sq ft, 16k LED screens in London; Craig McLean speaks to Henk Rogers, the man who’s kept the game alive
-
Never-before-seen Barbara Hepworth works go on show in landmark exhibitionIn ‘Barbara Hepworth: Strings’, various Hepworth sculptures will be exhibited in public for the first time, at Piano Nobile, London
