Zanele Muholi was born in Umlazi, Durban [like Capetown a township in South Africa], in 1972. She completed an Advanced Photography course at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown and held her first solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004.
She has worked as a community relations officer for the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), a black lesbian organisation based in Gauteng, and as a photographer and reporter for Behind the Mask, an online magazine on lesbian and gay issues in Africa. Her work represents the black female body in a frank yet intimate way that challenges the history of the portrayal of black women's bodies in documentary photography.
In 2008 she had a solo show at Le Case d'Arte, Milan, and in 2009 she exhibited alongside Lucy Azubuike at the CCA Lagos, Nigeria. She was the recipient of the 2005 Tollman Award for the Visual Arts, the first BHP Billiton/Wits University Visual Arts Fellowship in 2006, and was the 2009 Ida Ely Rubin Artist-in-Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Recent News - The opening of an exhibition at Constitution Hill turned sour when Arts and Culture Minister Lulu Xingwana stormed out of the exhibition, calling the work "immoral"
See Also: Faces and Phases is an ongoing series of black and white portraits that focuses on the commemoration and celebration of black lesbians' lives, and challenges the public's perceptions of female and male identity. Click Here.
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