Zanele Muholi
‘No one can tell the story better than ourselves,’ proclaims a quote from artist-photographer Zanele Muholi as you enter this exhibition. Maybe so, but the Tate makes a decent fist of trying in this extended showcase of a visual activist who has spent more than two decades focusing their lens on the lives of the South African Black LGBTQIA+ community through vivid portraits and self-portraiture. An earlier incarnation of the exhibition in 2020 fell prey to Covid restrictions after only five weeks and in the intervening time its narrative has grown, reflecting Muholi’s importance as a creative force for change. Muholi was born in South Africa in 1972, during the apartheid era, a time of rigid racial and social segregation. The exhibition explores the harsh implications of having binary divides imposed on people; whether of race, gender or sexuality, and the scars those leave. As you progress through the rooms, there’s a sense of travelling towards a sense of the subjects’ (and Muholi’s) healing and wholeness. The first room is not for the faint-hearted. ‘Aftermath’ is a black-and-white print of a close up of an anonymous torso, gender undisclosed, hands protectively clasped in front of genitals. The pants displaying the legend ‘Jockey’, at odds with the angry scar running down the right thigh, held together by numerous stitches. But even in such bleakness there’s wit. ‘Not Butch but My Legs Are’ points the camera at Muholi’s slippered feet cradling a black coffee, with hairy l