Apinda Mpako and Ayanda Magudulela, Parktown, Johannesburg (Being), 2007. Silver gelatin print. Edition of 8 + 2 artist proofs. 30 x 30 inches.

Saturday September 21, 2013 2:00 – 4:00 pm
L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center
The Village at Ed Gould Plaza, Room 111
1125 N. McCadden Place, Los Angeles, CA  90038

Award winning South African lesbian artist and activist Zanele Muholi will discuss her visual activism, her work with the queer media collective Inkayiso, her ongoing photographic portrait series of black lesbians and transmen Faces and Phases (2006-present), and portions of her film Difficult Love, a highly personal take on the challenges facing Black lesbians in South Africa today as told through Muholi’s life, work, friends and associates.


FACES AND PHASES

The Faces and Phases series of black and white portraits by Zanele Muholi focuses on the commemoration and celebration of black lesbians’ lives – an ongoing series which offers an insider’s perspective on the lives of the black lesbians and transmen she has met on her journeys as an activist. Collectively, the portraits are at once a visual statement and an archive: marking, mapping and preserving an often invisible community for posterity. Muholi writes:

“In the face of all the challenges our community encounters daily, I embarked on a journey of visual activism to ensure that there is black queer visibility. Faces and Phases is about our histories and the struggles that we face. Faces express the person, and Phases signify the transition from one stage of sexuality or gender expression and experience to another. Faces is also about the face-to-face confrontation between myself as the photographer/activist and the many lesbians, women and transmen I have interacted with from different places. Photographs in this series traverse spaces from Gauteng, Cape Town, Mafikeng and Botswana to Sweden.”

Muholi embarked on this project in 2006, taking portraits of women from the townships in South Africa. In 2008, after the xenophobic and homophobic attacks that led to the mass displacement of people in her home country, she decided to expand the ongoing series to include photographs of women from different countries. Collectively, the portraits are an act of visual activism.

For more information: see Facebook event