Zanele Muholi

Acquired from the artist's studio

In 2020, being confined indoors with limited movements and access to materials, South African visual activist Zanele Muholi, best known for chronicling South Africa’s Black trans, queer and intersex communities in photography, turned to painting as the chosen medium to communicate their message and continue with activism, using self as a tool of representation. 

This body of work channels the collects ive isolation, intimacy, and confinement brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, but also deeply personal. For the artist, painting surfaced as both a practical response and a contemplative exercise during a t.mes of fear and uncertainty. 

Across photography and painting, Muholi plays the roles of participant and image-maker, augmenting ideas around self-representation, collects ive identity and Black queer visibility.