Exhibition of the week Zanele Muholi
Tate Modern, London SE1 (020-7887 8888, tate.org.uk). Currently closed due to Covid-19 restrictions
“Zanele Muholi’s black-and-white portraits are as beautiful as they are harrowing,” said Chloë Ashby in The Art Newspaper. Take Basizeni XI, Cassilhaus, North Carolina (2016): it shows the South African photographer, “draped in deflated bicycle tyres, with pursed lips and a far-off look”. It’s a personal work – a reaction to the death of Muholi’s sister – but a political one, too. “The tyres reference the history of necklacing, a brutal form of punishment inflicted upon those suspected of aiding the apartheid regime.” Born in Umlazi, Durban, in 1972, Muholi – who chooses to use the gender-neutral pronouns they/ them – has lived through a tumultuous period in South African history, witnessing the end of white rule, and the transition to democracy. But the primary subject of their work is South Africa’s gay, lesbian, trans and queer people, who though theoretically protected by law, face “shockingly prevalent” hate crimes. Muholi is now the subject of a major exhibition at the Tate Modern, said Sue Hubbard on ArtLyst.com. Although the museum has temporarily closed due to lockdown, this “remarkable” show should be a guaranteed calendar highlight once it reopens.
There are some extremely disturbing portraits here, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. One series depicts victims of the “horrendous ordeal” of so-called corrective rape (designed to punish gay people or “turn” them heterosexual). Yet Muholi presents their subjects with “such gentle grace you might not immediately realise that these are the victims of sexual violence”. Elsewhere, a “tremendously strong” self-portrait sees Muholi’s hair “bristling” with pens, a reference to the notorious “pencil test” carried out during apartheid to determine whether people of indeterminate racial origin were “truly white”; if a pencil inserted into their hair fell, they “passed”. “It would be an understatement to say these images make you think twice about race, colour”, oppression and cruelty: Muholi sees themselves primarily as a “visual activist”. But these are also “images of exceptional beauty – exquisitely lit, brilliantly conceived”, albeit ones that never let you “lose yourself in simple admiration”.
For all the horror on show, Muholi’s photographs are proud statements of South African queer identity, said Adrian Searle in The Guardian. The artist celebrates their subjects’ “creative self-invention”, making “positives out of awkwardness” and portraying their “resilience” and “bravery” in the face of appalling prejudice. Muholi’s many selfportraits give us “multiple selves in different guises”: posing as a miner with helmet and headlamp after the killing of 34 striking miners by police in 2012; staring through the foliage in a parody of a “colonial-era noble savage”; festooned with clothes pegs in their hair. “What they have most of all is presence. They root you with their frank stares.”