“Muholi’s photography is not only a gesture of empowerment, but consistently challenges the heteronormative gaze while building a network of affinity and new pictorial histories.” - quote from the curatorial statement for the Gropius Bau showing

Visual artist and activist Zanele Muholi’s immense travelling survey of works, covering the full breadth of their career to date, will be shown for the first time in Switzerland. This follows on from their critically acclaimed first showing held in France at La MEP (Maison Européenne de la Photographie) in May 2023.

This comprehensive presentation of works has been organised by Tate Modern, in collaboration with, Gropius Bau in Berlin, the Bildmuseet at the University of Umea, and the Institut Valencià d’Art Modern in Valencia. The Swiss presentation, curated by Fanni Fetzer, Director of Kunstmuseum Luzern, and Yasufumi Nakamori, Senior Curator International Art (Photography) at Tate Modern, includes a selection of over 250 photographs, as well as videos and archival materials spanning the last two decades.

The retrospective is rooted around the projects essential to Muholi’s practice and includes Only Half the Picture (2002–2006), a series depicting South Africans who have experienced hate crimes, and Brave Beauties (2014 – ongoing), which documents queer beauty pageants celebrating diversities of body expressions. Also included is the series Faces and Phases (2006 – ongoing), comprising more than 500 portraits of Black lesbians, transgender and gender non-conforming individuals in South Africa, as well as Being (2006 – ongoing), Queering Public Space (2006 – 2020), and Somnyama Ngonyama (2012 – ongoing), a body of powerful and reflective self-portraits exploring themes such as labour, racism, Eurocentrism and sexual politics . The video installation on view is based on the interviews of eight members of the LGBTQIA+ community in South Africa conducted by the members of Inkanyiso, a platform for queer and visual activist media initiated by Muholi in 2006.

As written in the curatorial statement for the Gropius Bau presentation (between November 2021 and March 2022): “Muholi’s photography is not only a gesture of empowerment, but consistently challenges the heteronormative gaze while building a network of affinity and new pictorial histories.”

Rounding out the presentation will be a reading room accompanied by a timeline, numerous texts, film clips, posters, and newspapers that provide an overview of the artist’s work in the context of Apartheid, the development of queer activism in South Africa, and the representation of Black women.

The exhibition is on at Kunstmuseum Luzern from 8 July – 22 October 2023, after which it moves on to Tate Modern for six months starting June 2024.

Featured image: Qiniso, The Sails, Durban, 2019, © Zanele Muholi, Courtesy of the artist and Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York.