true reflections of a woman

By Musa Ngubane (BTM Reporter)

SOUTH AFRICA: August 23, 2006: Sexuality and gender is the theme for Zanele Muholi’s photography exhibition currently running at Newtown’s Photo workshop until 10 September this year.

Influenced by her pictorial book, Only Half a Picture –  published in March this year, the exposition resiliently portrays women’s bodies that unfold women’s menstruations including creative body art epitomized by plaited pubic hair. 

Through the photography, Muholi touches on the HIV/Aids pandemic – in most cases through sparse depiction of women’s bodies. She overtly reveals the blood that women have to see from month to month.

“Through their bodies women bear all the mental, physical and spiritual joys and sorrows, and everything else that they live with including poverty, surviving hate crimes and the relationships they build with people around them”, Muholi says of most lesbians.

Some of Muholi’s photographs are in black and white to reduce the intensity of their bumpiness while some are very lively. According to this 34-year-old gender and sexual activists, showing images of menstruations is her way of challenging people while breaking stereotypes, and ultimately appreciating women in general.

She admits that her work had previously been received with hostility by some of her close friends and colleagues. “Some of them went as far as refusing to be affiliated with me as they felt that some of my images are too revealing,” she says.

Muholi has been flaunting her work locally and internationally since 2002, and has won the Tillman and LGBTI Arts and Culture Awards in 2005. She also produced a short film that was screened at the gays film festivals locally and abroad.