Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness

Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness #1

by Zanele Muholi (Photographer), Renee Mussai (Contributor), Unoma Azuah (Contributor)

Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness is the long-awaited monograph from one of the most powerful visual activists of our time. The book features over ninety of Zanele Muholi’s evocative self-portraits, each image drafted from material props in Muholi’s immediate environment. A powerfully arresting collection of work, Muholi’s radical statements of identity, race, and resistance are a direct response to contemporary and historical racisms. As Muholi states, “I am producing this photographic document to encourage individuals in my community to be brave enough to occupy spaces—brave enough to create without fear of being vilified. . . . To teach people about our history, to rethink what history is all about, to reclaim it for ourselves—to encourage people to use artistic tools such as cameras as weapons to fight back.”

With more than twenty written contributions from curators, poets, and authors, alongside luxurious tritone reproductions of Muholi’s images, Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness is as much a manifesto of resistance as it is an autobiographical, artistic statement.

“These feel like images you might have dreamed, both of the kind that slip away and the ones you manage to keep tenuously in your grasp, slippery, otherworldly. . . . Before our eyes, Zanele Muholi transforms into a mother, a domestic worker, an Afrofuturist, an oracle. It’s fiction and it is not.”—Yrsa Daley-Ward, The New York Times Book Review

Genres: Art, Photography

212 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2018

About the author

Zanele Muholi is a South African artist and activist who works in photography, video, and installation. Born in Durban, South Africa in 1972, Muholi is the youngest of five children. The artist had their first solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004, and completed their MFA in 2009 from Ryerson University in Toronto, with a thesis on black lesbian identity and politics in South Africa.

Muholi's work is dedicated to increasing the visibility of black LGBTQ+ people. South Africa and other African countries still have rampant occurrences of homophobic violence, and Muholi aims to uplift LGBTQ+ people in these countries through their work. Muholi's work is held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim in New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Tate Modern in London, among others.

Reviews

[Orest Mercator]

Absolutely incredible. These self-portraits are profoundly original—so painterly, creative in their props, and symbolically laden. I’m blown away

[Wendelle]

powerfully affecting

[laila]

zanele muholi the woman that you are ....
i can't wait to check this out from the library again so i can actually read the text in this one

[Elaine Ker]

J'ai eu du mal avec les textes qui accompagnaient les photos, en revanche, j'ai beaucoup aimé l'entretien avec la photographe/modèle à la fin. Ça permettait de mieux comprendre les photos, ce qui, pour moi, est souvent nécessaire pour les apprécier. Il y en avait que j'avais aimées direct, mais pour beaucoup, elles m'étaient vraiment passées au-dessus. Au moins, maintenant, je peux apprécier l'intention.
Je ne sais pas grand-chose de l'Afrique du Sud alors c'était vraiment intéressant de lire Zanele Muholi parler de militantisme, de ce qu'elle veut exprimer.

[Mills College Library]

779.2092 M9529z 2018