Seattle Art Museum Presents ZANELE MUHOLI: SOMNYAMA NGONYAMA, HAIL THE DARK LIONESS Exhibition!

Ntozakhe II, Parktown, Johannesburg 2016 

ZANELE MUHOLI: SOMNYAMA NGONYAMA, HAIL THE DARK LIONESS exhibition to open at Seattle Art Museum on the 10th of July 2019

JUL 10 – NOV 3 2019

SEATTLE ART MUSEUM

THIRD FLOOR GALLERIES

Somnyama Ngonyama, Zulu for Hail the Dark Lioness, is a photographic series by the South African visual activist Zanele Muholi (19 July 1972). In the artist’s words, the series invites the viewer on “a discomforting self-defining journey, rethinking the culture of self-representation and self-expression.”

Taken in Europe, Asia, North America, and Africa between 2014 and 2017, each portrait is distinct and poses critical questions about social injustice, human rights, and contested representations of the black body. Muholi skillfully employs conventions of classical portraiture and fashion photography and mixes in tropes of ethnographic imagery to establish different archetypes and personae. A meaningful name for each of the 76 portraits is given in isiZulu, the first language of the artist who now lives in Johannesburg.

The portraits often rely on found materials, which become culturally loaded props. Scouring pads and latex gloves address themes of domestic servitude. Rubber tires, electrical cords, and cable ties reference forms of social brutality and capitalist exploitation. Collectively, the portraits evoke the plight of workers: maids, miners, and members of disenfranchised communities. Likewise, plastics draw attention to urgent environmental issues and toxic waste, while cowrie shells and beaded fly whisks highlight cliche´d, exoticized representations of African people. The contrast of Muholi’s skin is enhanced in post-production to become a focal point for questioning beauty, pride, and the interlinked phobias and -isms of homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, racism, and sexism that are navigated daily.

In Muholi’s personal visual memoir—an archive of the self—the artist often gazes defiantly at the camera, challenging viewers while firmly asserting their cultural identity on their own terms. These self-reflective and psychologically charged portraits are unapologetic in their exploration of the constraints of history, ideologies, and contemporary realities.

Bester I, Mayotte, 2015

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Zanele Muholi (b. 1972) is a visual activist and photographer based in Johannesburg. Muholi’s self-proclaimed mission is “to re-write 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.”

Muholi co-founded the Forum for Empowerment of Women (FEW) in 2002 and Inkanyiso (www.inkanyiso.org), a forum for queer and visual (activist) media, in 2009.

Muholi studied Advanced Photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg, and in 2009 completed an MFA: Documentary Media at Ryerson University, Toronto. In 2013, they became an Honorary Professor at the University of the Arts/Hochschule für Künste Bremen. Most recently, Muholi was bestowed France’s highest cultural honor, the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts des Lettres.

They were included in the South African pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013) and took part in the São Paolo Biennial (2010) and documenta 13, Kassel (2013). Recent solo exhibitions include the Brooklyn Museum, New York (2015); Rencontres d’Arles (2016); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2017). Their photographs are represented in the collections of Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), the Guggenheim (New York), Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), Tate Modern (London), South African National Gallery (Cape Town), and others. They are represented by Yancey Richardson, New York, and Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg.

MORE ABOUT SOMNYAMA NGONYAMA: 

Somnyama Ngonyama has been exhibited at the following spaces worldwide: 

1. Autograph, London: 14 July - 28 October 2017

2. Reid Gallery, Glasgow School of Art, Scotland:  11 November  - 17 December 2017

3. Fotografiska, Stockholm / Sweden:  8 February - 1 April 2018 

4. New Arts Exchange, Nottingham / UK:  28 April - 24 June or 1 July 2018  

5. Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta / USA: 13 September – 8 December 2018

6. Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME / USA: 14 February - 9 June 2019

7. Seattle Art Museum, Seattle / USA:  9 July - 3 November 2019

8. Cooper Gallery, Hutchins Center, Harvard University, Boston (Cambridge) / USA:  Jan - May 2020; exact dates tbc

9. Pitzer College Art Galleries, Claremont, California: exact dates tbc

and:

10.  Center for Visual Art, Metropolitan State University of Denver: 2021 - final confirmation and exact dates tbc

plus: 

- two other venues - New York and Texas in conversation.

Those are Somnyama Ngonyama shows since 2017

Somnyama Ngonyama publication have won the publisher an award Lucie Award, also got the 2019 Best Book award from Kraszna Krausz, London.