Visual Activist Zanele Muholi’s Powerful Series: Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness)

Put on your mask and head over to CVA’s new exhibit Somnyama Ngonyama: Hail the Dark Lioness to see more than 80 powerful portraits by South African photographer, artist, and visual activist, Zanele Muholi. From the perspective of a female who is both African and queer, Zanele’s images are more than just beautiful portraits as they speak to many who feel they have been distorted or mimicked by the privileged other.

“Somnyama is my response to a number of ongoing racisms … I am producing this photographic document to encourage people to be brave enough to occupy spaces, brave enough to create without fear of being vilified, brave enough to take on that visual text, those visual narratives,” Zanele says in an interview with curator Renée Mussai.

Their work does just this through their thoughtful costume design, backgrounds, and confronting gaze that challenges the viewer’s perceptions. Each backdrop subtly reveals the reoccurring violence that Black bodies are too often exposed to as well as the photographers’ personal experiences while traveling the world.

Their nomadic lifestyle carries important weight throughout the series as they use accessories such as ropes, zip ties, tires, and more that show the brutal history of violence against Black bodies. Bearing witness to hate crimes, police brutality, human rights violations, violence against women’s bodies, and racial profiling, Zanele uses these experiences to give recognition and respect to others’ stories.

“In a majority of photographs associated with previous visual anthropology, the subjects have no name. It’s only the author—or the so-called ‘expert’—who has a name and is credited. The subjects are silent. Their bodies are doubly brutalized by refusing to name them … If there is one thing that you should take from Somnyama, it is that Somnyama is a living being … It’s about acknowledging that a person is worthy and recognizing that this person has a name. That’s the difference,” the visual activist expresses.

Zanele’s work is honest and personal while confronting historical representations of Black womanhood. Most of Zanele’s work has focused exclusively on black LGTBQI people and looking at “Black resistance, existence, as well as insistence.” As an activist, her goal is to ensure that these communities are represented and exist in the visual archives. 

This international exhibit will be in Denver Metros Center for Visual Art until March 20, 2021, and features photographs taken between 2012-2019. The exhibit is free and open to all!