Art/Afrique: Installation of Zanele Muholi's work 'Faces and Phases Follow Up'

Zanele Muholi grew up in a Durban township. After settling in Johannesburg at the age of 19, she studied graphic design and in 2001 enrolled at the Market Photo Workshop, the school
founded by David Goldblatt. Following her first exhibition in 2004 at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, she worked for the magazine Behind the Mask and cofounded the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, based in Gauteng.
Muholi defines herself as a “visual activist.” Her work seeks to shine a light on a marginalized lesbian community, often victim to agression, notably in the form of punitive rape. Her work goes
far beyond social documentary to tackle questions of identity head-on. For her series Faces and Phases Follow Up – begun in 2006 and comprising 300 portraits – each model is photographed
at different stages of her life. Faces refers to the person and Phases to different phases of identity construction. “Faces and Phases also deals with the confrontation between my experience
as a photographer and that of my models...I’m trying to establish a relationship based on mutual understanding of what it means to be a black lesbian woman today.” More recently, in Somnyama Ngonyama, which in Zulu means “Hello black lioness,” Muholi appears proudly in a series of autoportraits, using costumes and
poses to identify and criticize clichés about black women.