Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama - Hail the Dark Lioness

Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness features over ninety of Muholi’s evocative self-portraits, each image drafted from material props in Muholi’s immediate environment.

This publication contains more than twenty written contributions from curators, poets, and authors, alongside luxurious tritone reproductions of Muholi’s images.  Muholi uses portraiture as a form of exposure to disrupt the dominant images of black women in the media today and to bear witness to both the brutality and the joy of black, queer, lesbian, and transgendered individuals in South Africa.

Zanele Muholi was born in Umlazi, Durban, South Africa, 1972 and is an honorary professor at the University of the Arts Bremen, Germany.  In 2009, Muholi founded Inkanyiso, a non-profit organization dedicated to visual art, media advocacy, and visual literacy training for South Africa’s LGBTQI community.

Hardcover: 212 pages

Publisher: Aperture (August 15, 2018)

ISBN-13: 9781597114240

Dimensions: 10.8 x 1 x 14.5 inches