Lesbian Images Cause Political Debate In South Africa
‘Innovative Women exhibition’ is group show featuring 10 black contemporary female artists from different parts of South Africa and is co-sponsored by the Department of Arts and Culture, which gave R300,000 to the exhibition. The show opened in Johannesburg august 2010 and it was also shown in Durban and Cape Town last automn. Everything seemed fine until a few weeks ago, when the South African medias revealed the true story about the opening of the show (from an anonymous sources): Arts and Culture Minister Lulu Xingwana, who was to have opened the show stormed out of the exhibition in disgust over a “pornographic” art with images of black lesbian couples.
Arts minister in lesbian art photo furore
When questioned about the incident Minister Xingwana said in a statement read by her spokeswoman Lisa Combrinck:
“Our mandate is to promote social cohesion and nation building. I left the exhibition because it expressed the very opposite of this. “It was immoral, offensive and going against nation-building.” to the TimesLive.co.za (as quoted by Behind The Mask a website GLBTQ magazine in Africa. See link to the article below)
“Innovative Women exhibition” show features 10 artists, who express their own sense of identity and what it means to be a woman in South Africa today and comments on issues that is relevant to all South Africans. Xingwana appeared most upset by the work of Zanele Muholi and Nandipha Mntambo, which show female nudes and same-sex love. See a selection of the artworks.
Neither Muholi nor Mntambo attended the opening of the show last august and they are surprised to learn about the South African Arts and Culture Minister reaction to their artworks.
Photographer And Lesbian Activist Zanele Muholi
speaking to the Cape Times from a hotel room in Pennsylvania, USA, where she is exhibiting and lecturing, said: “It’s ironic, it’s annoying and really frustrating. It goes to show how homophobic some of our ministers are. This is a knock to our constitution.” “I’m really disturbed. It’s beyond just lesbian women lying next to each other; it’s censorship.
“She has no understanding of what black lesbians are facing in the country.” (See link to the article below)
About Zanele Muholi
Queer photographer and lesbian activist Zanele Muholi won the Casa Africa award for best female photographer and a Fondation Blachère award at Les Rencontres de Bamako biennial of African photography (2009). She also received a Fanny Ann Eddy accolade from IRN-Africa for her outstanding contributions in the study of sexuality in Africa, at the Genders & Sexualities in Africa Conference held in Syracuse, New York.
She has worked as a community relations officer for the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), a black lesbian organisation based in Gauteng, South Africa, and as a photo journalist for Behind the Mask, an online magazine on lesbian and gay issues in Africa. Her work represents the black female body in a frank yet intimate way that challenges the history of the portrayal of black women’s bodies in documentary photography. She attempts to create a visual history for black South African lesbians, but struggles against homophobia.
Related Links
Zanele Muholi’s website
Article: MINISTER SLAMS ‘PORN’ EXHIBITION by Behind the Mask
Article: Arts minister in lesbian art photo furore by Jason Warner, Tonight.co.za