Inside Zanele Muholi’s blockbuster show on Black beauty and brilliance

As Zanele Muholi’s major exhibition opens at Tate Modern, the South African visual activist is feeling most grateful for the simple things. “Life is good,” they tell Dazed. “We give thanks for living and being able to create.” The anticipation around the show is especially high, for it will be the Tate’s second attempt to survey Muholi’s oeuvre after the first was curtailed by the Coronavirus pandemic. And this time, the exhibition has reinvented itself for a bigger space, with the inclusion of new work including Muholi’s three-dimensional expansions into bronze and sound baths created by South African musician Toya Delazy.

Brought up in Apartheid-era Durban, Muholi has spent the last two decades documenting the lives of Black queer, transgender and non-conforming South Africans, including themself. Subverting stereotypes associated with the depiction of Black bodies through the weaving of histories, visual references and photography, Muholi continually envisions a future informed by the past. Stood loud and proud on the shoulders of their ancestors, Muholi makes work that is both empathic and emphatic. It is not only about surviving but thriving. It is not only about bearing witness but affirming existence. It is about living bravely and beautifully.

As the major exhibition opens its doors to its first visitors, we catch up with with Muholi to talk about Black beauty, activism and intergenerational conversations.

It’s a busy time for you, with shows at both Tate and SFMOMA, as well as the release of the second volume of Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness [Aperture]. How do you deal with exposure?

Zanele Muholi: It took me a long time to get to where I am today due to prejudices and censorship. It gives me mixed emotions because a lot of LGBTQIA+ people are still under-resourced and suffering. More opportunities for exposure are needed. I look forward to the day when we won’t feel like interlopers. Then it will feel like second nature.

In what ways do you see your work as future-building? That is, the work your photographs might do tomorrow, next year et cetera? 

Zanele Muholi: I believe my photographs exist in a kind of dual category because they both educate people today while forming a canon for generations to come, guiding them well into the future. I’m grateful for the academics, activists and art educators who cite my work too because this expands the narrative for posterity.

What kind of future do you envisage?

Zanele Muholi: One where people are able to freely express aspects of their gender, sexuality and race. A future where we have safe spaces for all and where no one is compromised.

You describe yourself as a ‘visual activist’. Why do you consider visual language to be so powerful? 

Zanele Muholi: My work involves more than simply ‘creating’. It’s about hitting the ground, as it were, and engaging with the gender, queer and trans politics that impact real people I know. It also requires one to access certain spaces that have previously denied us visibility. Photography is a way of undoing the silence of those spaces. It’s a means of articulation, and an added layer of my own activism.

Do you remember the first time you were struck by what Blackness can look like, feel and do when reclaimed as identity and beauty?

Zanele Muholi: For so long, Blackness has been used to disparage and demeane by those who create extra-dark caricatures of us. The truth is deep. Black people exist and they are beautiful. Recognising this unlocked in me a strong desire to be seen, along with all the other Black beauties in all their different hues. Although I feel I’ve always been steeped in my Blackness, my self-acceptance has grown as I’ve continued to make self-portraits over the years. I connect with each one in a unique way.  

“Creating visual narratives that relate to the past and present gives me strength to voice what has silenced many before us” – Zanele Muholi

It was while you started working on your self-portraits that you changed your pronouns, right? I’m interested to hear about how you saw this not only in the context of gender identity but the plurality of selves.

Zanele Muholi: Yes. Assuming multiple selves was, and still is, a way for me to acknowledge my ancestral roots and all the forces that make me – and us – whole. Creating visual narratives that relate to the past and present gives me strength to voice what has silenced many before us. In the end, we are one and I’m conscious of it in the work I do.

I love the idea of having intergenerational conversations with the past. If you could have a conversation with someone from the past, who would it be?

Zanele Muholi: It would be my beloved mother. She left with many of my questions unanswered, so every day I wish I could sit down with her and catch up. My mother is a big part of why I changed my pronoun. I feel like she walks with me, and I with her. I am my mother’s child… 

Zanele Muholi runs at Tate Modern, London, until 26 January 2025.