Cathy's Art Diary

Interesting exhibition at Tate Modern looking at the art of South African artist, Zanele Muholi. The work was mainly photographic documenting LGBTQIA+ life in South Africa to raise awareness of injustices and create positive visual histories. For this the artist often uses their own body. The work was presented via series of works. I loved the series Faces and Phases of Black lesbians, transgender and gender non-conforming people shown along two opposite walls of the gallery and the section on queering public space where they photograph people in spaces they would not have been allowed in under Apartheid. I was most struck though by their sculptures particularly this one which appears to balance on its toes. Closed 26 January 2025 Reviews Times Telegraph Evening Standard    

Interesting exhibition at Charleston Farmhouse of photograph portraits by Zanele Muholi. The show consisted of 84 photographs beautifully hung to fill the gallery two deep. They are part of a project by the artist to highlight the lives of the LBGT community in their native South Africa and this selection was chosen in response to the sister exhibition currently running at Charleston on the novel Orlando. I found it quote moving to stand in this room of faces all looking directly at you. You knew each one had a story to tell and you wanted to ask them. Closes on 6 January 2019 Reviews Times Guardian Telegraph

Annual exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery for this prize which rewards a living photographer for a specific body of work in an exhibition or publication. The exhibition showed the work of the four artists on the shortlist. I was very moved by the work of Zanele Muholi who had produced a series of portraits, collated into a book, of gay people in South Africa, looked in particular at the impact of homophobia and violence including the ‘curative rape’ of black gay women. The exhibition had a wall of these photographs which were striking showed them alongside the book and an art work which had invited people from London to transcribe some of the stories in the book onto a banner. I also liked the work of Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse which looked at a high rise block in Johannesburg which had been built of the aspirational middle classes in the 1970s but had become and dilapidated refuge for the urban poor and was now being demolished. They had produced ta...