Hail, the Dark Lioness!

Written by Ksenia Rundin

South African visual activist Zaneli Muholi has turned Stockholm’s frosty Friday morning into a subtropical celebration of self-reflection and contemporary identity politics. Her solo exhibition “Somnyama Ngonyama” (Hail, the Dark Lioness) invites us into the hard everyday life of LBTQI-world of the Republic of South Africa and narrates their story through her personal experiences expressed in a myriad of reality-embellished and self-speaking black-and-white photographs. Tyres, torn plastic bag, clothes pegs, metal sponge, a vacuum cleaner hose and, all of a sudden, a Japanese kimono - every item, besides creating an aesthetic aura for the beholder’s eyes, bears a deep and significant reference to the past and challenges the future. Using all these attributes, Zaneli Muholi claims the right to her own body without waiting for someone to validate her existence.

By turning the camera towards herself, she creates a conversation filled with a deep emotional cascade and a long camp for freedom of individuality and freedom of love. Meanwhile, she also creates an expressive intimacy based on a cultural context and wrapped into a complex notions of sustainable beauty and desire. The photographer draws attention to urgent environmental issues, sexual politics and violence by creating strong emotional ties confiding her personal trauma to the camera lens. She establishes her own artistic language, dancing as a robe-walker between classical portraiture, fashion photography and ethnographic imagery, letting the dark lioness become the focal point of the moment eternalised.