Fierce …
The self-portraits in Zanele Muholi’s ongoing series Somnyama Ngonyama: Hail the Dark Lioness are politically impassioned: “I’m reclaiming my blackness, which I feel is continuously performed by the privileged other,” they have said (they avoid gendered pronouns). But Muholi is playful with it.
Domestic goddess …
The poses are the stuff of classic portraiture but the props are not: wire scourers and clothes pegs fashioned into headdresses and jewellery. Typically staring us straight in the eye, Muholi summons the shades of black history and identity. The humble materials point to household servitude.
Handy work …
In this 2016 photo, the black latex gloves suggest cleaning but also fetish, playing games with restrictive categories. Gloves, with their suggestively inflated pregnant hollows and phallic fingers, blur binary definitions of gender.
On the record …
The dark lionesses are a recent development. Muholi’s earlier series have included portraits of people from South Africa’s LGBTQI communities.
Included in Kiss My Genders, Southbank Centre: Hayward Gallery, SE1, to 8 September
