Notes

Kindly donated by the artist and Stevenson Gallery, Amsterdam and Cape Town.

The present lot is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from the Norval Foundation.

This artwork is drawn from Songyama Ngonyama, a series of more than 80 self-portraits, in which celebrated visual activist Zanele Muholi uses their body as a canvas to confront the deeply personal politics of race and representation in the visual archive. In Somnyama Ngonyama, which translates from isiZulu to 'Hail The Dark Lioness', Muholi playfully employs the conventions of classical painting, fashion photography, and the familiar tropes of ethnographic imagery to rearticulate contemporary identity politics. Each black and white self-portrait asks critical questions about social (in)justice, human rights, and contested representations of the Black body. 

Muholi is a visual activist, humanitarian and photographer. They studied at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg and obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree in documentary media from Ryerson University in Canada with a thesis on the visual history of black lesbian identity and politics in post-apartheid South Africa. As a photographer and activist, they founded two forums directed at empowering women and supporting queer artistic activism. Muholi has exhibited across South Africa and abroad, including the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), the Brooklyn Museum (2015), New York, USA, documenta 13 (2021) in Kassel, Germany, Tate Modern (2020 – 21), London, United Kingdom, and Norval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa.